Getting to the ancient port city of Caesarea was not easy– first of all it was hard to make it clear where we wanted to go as we were saying ‘Seh-zeh-ree-ah’ but the locals pronounce it ‘Qasaria’ with a hard c. I had to write it down to be understood! After switching trains correctly we arrived at the nearest train station to the ancient site and headed for the bus stop, only to discover that the bus left about two hours later … approximately […]
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Jerusalem: A walk through 4000+ years of history
Jerusalem is one of the most deeply contested cities on earth and hasn’t done a great job of living up to its name, meaning ‘City of Peace’. In its long history it has been attacked 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, besieged 23 times and destroyed twice (source). Although it is no longer physically divided – with the walls and barbed wire coming down in 1967, boundaries and divisions still exist among its people. How its future will play out with two very […]
Borjomi
After Akhaltsikhe & our trip to Vardzia we had a couple of days in the small town of Borjomi, situated in the valley of the Mtkvari River 48 kms from Akhaltsikhe on the way to Tbilisi. Borjomi is famous for its salty-sour, fizzy mineral water which we didn’t think too much of, but it’s pretty popular in the former Soviet Union. Aside from the mineral water, the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park is the other main attraction that brings tourists here. It was October when we […]
The Georgian Military Highway
We did two day trips from Tbilisi when we were there in April and I can recommend both to future travellers to Georgia. The first was with a driver up what is known as the Georgian Military Highway to Kazbegi, a truly magnificent drive. We stopped off at a few beautiful points along the way both there and back. The second trip from Tbilisi was to Uplitsikhe cave city and Gori, birthplace of Stalin and home to the Stalin Museum. I’ll cover this one […]
Yazd, Iran
Most places we went to in Iran were above amazing, all with their own delights and highlights, so it’s hard to pick a favourite. But if I had to, Yazd would certainly be vying for the prize! For starters there was the hotel we stayed in. It was cheap; $20 USD per night for a private room, with 3 toilet shower rooms shared with one other couple and a decent free breakfast. Ok the room was not soundproof at all but we are good […]
Qeshm Highlights
Valentine’s Day this year was amazing! Not particularly romantic or anything but we had a day off workawaying and our host Annelie was kind enough to take us and two other volunteers (Milan & Eugene) on a fabulous tour of the major sights on Qeshm island. I’ll let the pictures do the talking in this post and provide a few bits of information on each place (thanks to the Lonely Planet Iran (2012) Persian Gulf section). Our first stop was a small shop near […]