Day 53 21 June 2019 Kars
Well here are having arrived in Kars at seven o’clock in the morning we leave the train dragging our bags through the empty town to our hotel. We receive a friendly greeting and have a nice breakfast. After resting up we head into town and have some lunch at the very hip ‘Milk Bar”. On leaving we see some of the heaviest rain of the whole trip and the town plumbing seems completely unable to cope with it.
In the afternoon we head up to the castle behind the town there is a pleasant mosque and the view as night falls is quite lovely.
Again we are reminded of the esteem in which Ataturk is held as there is a photo with the slogan ” The Homeland is grateful to…”.
As we headed back down to our hotel wondering where to eat we came across the lovely “train guide”.She insisted that we join the rest of her group at a Turkish cultural dinner and show. We did as we were told and there was our “interpreter” Emre who again did the honours and helped us to order our meal. During dinner, we were regaled with three troubadours who were carrying on a Turkish tradition of “call and response”.One would sing for a while and the others would respond apparently they were trading friendly insults. People were tip[ping them by putting banknotes on the end of their instruments.
Then we had a dance troupe who did very energetic callisthenics on a very small stage.
Fond farewells to Emre and the others then back to the hotel to get ready for Georgia.
Day 54 22 June 2019
So Kars is the nearest you can get to the Georgian border by train. So from here we got a taxi over the hills exited turkey and entered Georgia near a village called Vale. We met our driver David on the other side who took us into Tbilisi. A slight oops as we hadn’t noticed the time change between turkey and Georgia so we were later to meet our Airbnb host that anticipated. All resolved as we checked into our gorgeous apartment.
