We’ll be coming down the mountain
Morning, we are on that bus to Hopa, near the border of Georgia, we’ve met our first English person, who looks a bit like Frodo Baggins, and we are hurtling along through some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen. I don’t expect to survive this trip so I may not get to post this blog…
Back again, we survived – I missed a lot of that because there were significant parts of the journey where I had my eyes closed – the tunnels were my favourite part.
Our driver’s speciality was overtaking near bends particularly with sheer drops on one side…
Off to our hotel now!
Okay so it’s raining and we can’t find the sodding place…We’ve been round the block three times. Time to ask someone.
Apparently they’ve changed the name of the hotel but not updated the outside of the building…back through the rain to the place we’ve been past twice already…and we can’t get in.
I look up my booking.com details and there is a PIN number and there is a number key code pas on the door – it doesn’t work.
We can see there is an open door at the back, so round the back we go.
The entrance way smells like the local toilet and it’s covered in graffiti – we can see there are concrete steps leading up into the dark, this can’t be the place?!
Theo has been waiting under a balcony shielding himself and our bags from the rain so we let him in to sit in the urinal.
Rosa and I brave the stairs. We walk past a viscous cat who hisses at us both, loving this.
We get to the top of the six flights of stairs and there is a blue door with no sign, no writing of any kind on it, so we go back down a level to the door with the security signs on it and two door bells.
The second bell works and the suspicious woman who answers points back up the stairs and hurries back inside. There is a similar number pad to the one downstairs so I try the code again and this time it works.
To be fair it’s quite nice inside and my hopes temporarily lift, although I haven’t forgotten our rucksacks and the six flights of concrete stairs.
There is a slightly bored and depressed looking youth sitting at the desk and I let off a bit if steam about the lack of a hotel name anywhere on the outside or inside of the building, which he agrees with, and then he looks up our booking…and guess what, there’s a problem.
We have booked a triple room with a balcony …it says it on my booking.
But there are no triple rooms and no balcony’s in this hotel.
He can’t let all three of us stay in one room, it’s two rooms or nothing. He can’t explain why the booking was accepted or, why no-one let us know.
I lose the arm wrestle with Rosa over who goes down past the scary cat to let Theo know what’s going on.
I jog lightly (!) back up the six flights, mostly in the dark because the lighting doesn’t work, and after twenty minutes of negotiating the cancellation we are on our way in the rain to find a different hotel…
You have good days, not so good days, rough days and days you will always remember 🙂
Suicidal bus drivers, hissing cats and unmarked hotels without balconies…. Georgia has a lot to make up if it’s going to compete with Turkey!
I hope you found lovely alternative accommodation, preferably with a friendly cat…
Blimey. That sounded quite grim. Really hope you found somewhere much better. Glad you had a good birthday though and had cake and everything! What a birthday adventure you’re on. The Hammam sounds like a very different experience to the Victorian Turkish Baths Angie and I visited in Harrowgate, which was rather more genteel, I think. Hilarious images of a stern masseur pounding the aches out of your limbs Theo. Keep it coming please. I’m loving travelling with you in my mind! Xxxx
Where did you end up?
Hope you found the local Premier Inn!! XX
Oh dear. . Love how you still find the humour (through gritted teeth, no doubt).