September 17, 2023
Tblisi
There's not a lot to be said about the ride from Mtskheta to Tbilisi. It's an unpleasant section of road, sometimes eight lanes wide with little to no shoulder and we just wanted to get it over and done with in as short a time as possible. We had a late start hoping reach the apartment we had booked in Tbilisi's old town at the earliest check-in time. Thankfully a tailwind and flat route meant we got there even faster and we had an hour to waste before we could check in.
So we spent the hour having lunch on a park bench in Pushkin Park. The park is named after the poet Alexander Pushkin and is adjacent to Freedom Square which is actually a circus and not a square. It got its name in 1918 when Georgia declared its independence from Tsarist Russia, but was renamed by the Soviets in 1940 in honor of Lavrentiy Beria, a Georgian-Soviet politician and Bolshevik activist reverting to Freedom Square on the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
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We have a fantastic apartment a few hundred meters from Freedom Square which we had booked for two nights on Booking.com. We had hoped to spend three nights here but Booking.com indicated that it wasn't available for the third night. Chatting to the owner revealed that it was but at a higher rate (I often get big discounts using Booking.com). Luckily I managed to negotiate a price midway between the asking and discounted price for the third night with the owner.
The South African Springboks had their second game of the Rugby World Cup this afternoon. Their opponents, Romania, weren't expected to provide much resistance and didn't so we had an easy win. However the next game of the day, Australia vs Fiji, was more exciting with Fiji running out winners against their more fancied opponents.
Today's ride: 27 km (17 miles)
Total: 1,410 km (876 miles)
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