historic,  outdoors,  travel

Adventures in the Kakheti Region

July 3, 2024 /

We rented a car for a week in preparation for our trip to Batumi and took advantage of having a car with AC to take a trip a couple hours out of Tbilisi. My husband wanted to visit the monastery of St. Nino and we booked a horseback ride nearby. As usual we used the Maps.Me map, but we still had to ask for directions! On the way, we saw a small fortress near the road and stopped for a bit.

We can never pass up a fortress! There are a lot of lookout fortresses and towers throughout the country. Georgia used to be part of the silk route and being close to Turkey and other countries had to be on the lookout for invaders.

Does this tower make you think of a chicken? We were able to park and walk up to the fortress. The walls and towers are still intact.

The Katheti is well known for its vineyards and wineries and it is a sight to behold when you visit in early fall. Stands by the side of the road will see grapes freshly picked as well as other wares.

When we arrived at the monastery, it was very crowded: it was actually the feast day of St. Nino! We had to park our car along the road about a mile away. This was a different experience than our first time in the fall 7 years ago. I don’t enjoy large crowds in the heat, so after a short visit in the original church and the new one that is being built, I sat outside.

After some time at the monastery, we headed towards the horse ranch and winery for our horseback ride. The GPS got us there easily since it was about 10-15 minutes away, but we still got confused as we weren’t sure which entrance took us to where we needed to go. We finely figured out it was the inn: combination inn, ranch, and restaurant!

The location was beautiful! We had a few appetizers before our ride, in retrospect, we should have had them after since our ride got cut short because of the weather. About halfway through, it started thundering and it started to hail! We had to get off our horses and walk them, and very shortly after, we got a ride back to the inn. The boys did enjoy their first horseback ride. I still don’t especially lover riding a horse.

We met this cute 2 days old foal whose momma was hit by a car. He was very friendly. We enjoyed our day outside of the city, but the driving definitely took longer than I expected. The app we use only gives you an estimated time for the distance you are driving and doesn’t include traffic as it is not using internet, but just your phone location. Just leaving the city took 30 minutes!

A bientôt!

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