Samtredia - Tbilisi

Samtredia - Zestaponi 68 km
Zestaponi - Chashuri 72 km
Chashuri - Tbilisi by train

Guess what is the safest and fastest road for cycling in Georgia? Secondary roads, bicycle path, main road??? Highway!!! Few kilometers after the town of Samtredia the highway started and a cab driver told us that is was safe and allowed to drive on it by "velociped". Since all the three of us have some bad experiences with cycling on  highways we were a bit scared. However there was nearly no traffic so we decided to have a go. We drove on  the breakdown line and felt very safe. The policemen and road workers we encountered cheered at us and did not have anything agains cyclists on the highway. On the downside the highway was pretty boring to drive one since there were no curves or holes...
We then were happy to arrive in Zestaponi where we soon found a kind of modern hotel. It seemed that the hotel was built with a belief that Zestaponi would become a known tourist destination. The hotel was very big, built with much glass and the rooms were equipped with two tv's, aircon and so on. It has to be said that the shower was not working and one of the lifts wanted to hurt Kim. We were the only guests in the whole hotel! For dinner we had khautchapuri.
The next morning we ate breakfast in the hotel and were positively surprised. We ate in a galant room and there was plenty of eggs, cheese, sausage, cream and so on. Well fed we started our journey on  the main road towards Chaschuri. We followed the river Rikotula and the scenery was staggering! There were many restaurants on the road side and in one of them we ate delicious grilled fish and pork.
We had a mountain pass to climbe a d it was a hot day. There was a tunnel near the top and we planned to cycle through the tunnel. In contrary to the highway bicycles were not allowed in the tunnel, which was reasonable because the tunnel was almoust two kilometers long and had no safty line. The bypass road was very calm and a man gave us some bread which he had made himself. And we had so e nutella left...
In Chaschuri we were loking for a hotel but there was no hotel in the whole town. Guess what? Giga Berozashvili invited us to stay at his and his parents house! He also offered some chai, some figs and wine his family made themselfs. He also showed us around in Chashuri and can therefore be considered as the one and only tourguide of the whole town. There is an old castle in Chaushuri and a beautiful church. His mother Marina prepaired some beds for us in the meantime and cooked a lovely dinner.
In the next morning we were also invited for breakfast. We then sadly had to leave. On this occasion i learned that in Georgia man give also to man goodbye kisses. We thank family Berozashvili so much for their hospitality and hope to meet them again!
Then we boarded the train to Tbilisi. Our bicycles were not the only big luggage on this train. One man had big bags of leaves and another had many chairs with him. I was happy when we could unload our bicycles u damaged. We then searched for a hostel in Tiblisi and went for a pizza. Tbilisi is a beautiful city with many trees and many parks. There is also a nice historic city, an old and well preserved castle and many churches. Therefore Tbilisi is quiet touristic and definitely a city that would be worth a longer stay!