Maybe it was a bit like running out of coke, but this year I made my first trip to Batumi, one of the coastal cities of Georgia. It is 100 km from Batumi Rize Center, which borders Kemalpaşa town of Artvin's Hopa district. Tour companies in Rize allow you to go back to Batumi for 20 TL round trip. The tour departs from Rize at 9.30 in the morning. The return is at 9 pm. The tour does not have much scope, I will mention it in the rest of the article.
Georgia does not require a visa or passport to the Sarp border crossing, in the same way as Turkey does not demand passports from Georgian citizens. Instead, it is enough to fill in the credentials on a document provided while passing through customs and pay a 50 TL fee. This paper - in the words of our tour guide - acts as a passport and in case of loss, it may take 2-3 days to return from Georgia. Also, if traveling with children, parents must be present, otherwise a power of attorney is required.
When the guide gave this information, an elderly woman from Rize on the bus and her 40s daughter were confused. Besides these, there were two children and there was no power of attorney. When the guide said that you cannot pass, the old woman showed her passports angrily and said, "We are Australian citizens, this passport passes everywhere." It turns out that this old aunt from Rize and those with her came from Australia, they were citizens of that area. The guide said, "If you are not a Turkish citizen, your situation may be different, I don't know about it" and cut it out. Along the way, this old aunt said something to her grandchildren, half Turkish and half English, saying "Tell mom!" I kept hearing him convey this to his daughter. Sometimes the aunt from Big Rize would look right and left and say "very nice!" his saying remained in my ears ..
We did not know whether it was good or bad during the trip, but the weather was gloomy, it was almost like it was going to rain. Our guide confidently said, “We will cook when we cross the border” despite the overcast weather, but when the result was not so, he clarified the situation with a remarkably important determination saying “the weather is closed today”.
We came to Kemalpaşa, our border town from Rize to Batumi, in just an hour. As we approached the Sarp border gate, the guide explained what we should do at the gate. After paying 50 TL (formerly only 15 TL) of the papers I mentioned above from the relevant unit at the entrance, I filled it and turned to the box offices at the door. They said that those with torn identity cards may have problems, in this case, you can fix the identity by giving 3-5 TL to the identity coverers around. I do not know if those who come with passports are engaged in these paperwork.
Border After a not too exaggerated queue, I crossed over from the Turkish side. I went down a long corridor to the Georgian side. The main crowd was here. Our guide said, "Don't wait at a single box office, scatter to the toll booths to save time." We did that too. My waiting here was not exaggerated either, it was my turn in 20-25 minutes. The Georgian officer, without saying anything, examined the paper I filled and opened the turnstile. We were in Georgia now.
We passed to Batumi with a staff of 7. We set out to find our bus, waiting for others in our group to pass the toll booths. In rare cases, there may be problems with vehicle systems at the door, and the passage or return of the bus can take much longer than usual.
As soon as we enter Batumi, our eyes are looking for a double road with two lanes in both directions, but unfortunately not. There is only one normal round trip. As if the tree power poles on the roadside were forcibly standing. They support many poles with other poles and hold them like that.
When we move to Batumi, the most surprising point is that there is a beach right next to the border. Beach, but not a beach, a pebble one .. I could not express it clearly because I do not have a beach culture. In fact I surprised this field of 300-400 m ahead of the start of the border, while almost everywhere rocky beach in Turkey .. We have learned that in accordance with the description of our Local Business; Batumi was the Antalya of Georgia. He even exaggerated and told us that it was the only seaside city, but when I look at the map, I see places like Poti and Sokhumi. Maybe he said so because the southernmost is Batumi.
The road in Batumi does not continue from the coast like we do. You can go from inside. The second thing I am surprised at in Batumi is that it is extremely flat. Artvin, Rize, Trabzon, there were plenty of plains in Batumi that we could not see here. The city was in a huge plain. We learned this from the deep knowledge of our guide that the Coruh River provided. Çoruh was pouring into the sea in Batumi, we passed over it. Due to the dam on our side, its water has decreased considerably, but it is seen that the water level has risen due to the opening of the doors at certain times of the day, especially on the return.
While I was driving towards the city center of Batumi, I saw a small plane in the greenery, as it turns out that was the airport. Look carefully at the square
The road in Batumi does not continue from the coast like we do. You can go from inside. The second thing I am surprised at in Batumi is that it is extremely flat. Artvin, Rize, Trabzon, there were plenty of plains in Batumi that we could not see here. The city was in a huge plain. We learned this from the deep knowledge of our guide that the Coruh River provided. Çoruh was pouring into the sea in Batumi, we passed over it. Due to the dam on our side, its water has decreased considerably, but it is seen that the water level has risen due to the opening of the doors at certain times of the day, especially on the return.
While I was driving towards the city center of Batumi, I saw a small plane in the greenery, as it turns out that was the airport. When I looked carefully, I noticed the square. Two Havaş buses, accompanied by the police, passed us right after. The guide clarified the situation: In accordance with the agreement made with Georgia, we can use Batumi airport. If we're going to Batumi airport ticket place, while Turkey said if we called the police escorted off the plane after Havas bus ride to the limit in any waiting, we can now directly to Turkey without being subject to control and so on. No, if we specified it as Batumi, naturally we are subject to customs control at the airport.
According to the guide, who caught our ears with his beautiful voice and style (!), Fuel smuggling was famous in this region. Fuel prices in Batumi are almost half. Large buses coming here again drain the fuel fill the border into Turkey. Some measures have been taken to prevent this, such as a 14 passenger limit, but there are still those who know their job. In Georgia, not only fuel but also vehicle prices are mouth-watering. 80-100 thousand price cut of cars in Turkey can be purchased for 15-20 thousand a lot if I do not exaggerate. Another strange situation is that in Batumi the traffic light, the rules do not work very well and therefore there are an excessive number of accidents. So much so that the owners of the car stopped having bumpers and mirrors. It is standard that many luxury cars do not have mirrors and bumpers.
When we arrived at the city center of Batum, we started to choose one by one the buildings with different history and architecture than those in our country. But this time we started to pay attention to them as we heard about the situations that the guide had hit from the ground up from the beginning of the journey. Namely; Many of the houses were in ruins. Most of them were covered with tin plates instead of plaster, and they were rusted, blistered, warped. Again, according to the guide, the buildings with elevators were very few in number, and there was a fee for them. Speaking of wages, the Georgian currency is "Lari" and "Tetra" (like our Lira and Kurus). What wisdom Lari is more valuable than Lira (1 Lira = 1.18 Lari).
Georgia is one hour behind us in hours. While it is 11:00 in our country, it is still 10:00. When we cross the border, if your phone is set to "use local time", the meeting times given by the guide can get confused as it immediately switches to the country time. You should pay attention to this.
In Batumi, we first went to a Turkish restaurant recommended by the guide and fed our stomach. Karabakan restaurant's owner was from Turkey and the ingredients they use -for the water even as Turkey. The waiters working in the restaurant were Georgian but could speak enough Turkish. We thought a little about whether to eat meat or not, but the guide and the restaurant owner at least gained our confidence in food and we trusted it to make it halal, we ate. According to the guide, this is one of the rare good restaurants we could see in Georgia. Food prices were also very normal.
After dinner, we took the bus again to go to the place called Botanik. The content of the tour can be summarized as "food, botany, church and free time". As we were passing through the city, the guide quickly kept telling us where we could shop, where we could buy electronics, etc.
Botanical Park is located a little outside Batumi. Like Ziraat in Rize, it includes various plants, trees, fruits, but it probably covers an area 20-30 times larger than Ziraat (114 hectares). In the words of the guide, other tours leave the passengers at the entrance of the Botanical Park and wait for them to exit the park on foot and return. Our tour allowed us to take us to the top of the botanic and walk down through the park on foot. In this regard, we really need to congratulate the tour. It is a bad idea to spend time on the slopes of that huge park in a limited time. While we were going down while looking at the view, the other tours were trying to climb up tiredly. We also had the chance to watch Batumi from above while going towards the upper gate of the Botanic.
Right at the entrance of the park (entrance was 6 Lari), there were vendors selling cherries. Those in Rize were immature yet, but here they were all black. Its plate was sold for 2 laris. The interior of the botanical park was well preserved. It was a natural environment. We saw deep blue hydrangeas, weird fruits we didn't understand, huge trees (3274 different tree species). There were also banana trees. When we looked down from the cliffs of the park, we saw that the Batumi coast continues with the old railway. As I mentioned before, the driveway proceeded from inside, not from the beach. Seeing this view, it seems like a good idea to go from the inside to protect the beach, but unfortunately, we have no alternative since there is no flat area in the Black Sea Region in our country. However, our coastal road from Artv to Samsun has a different beauty. I think it is very enjoyable to travel by the sea ..
When we traveled from the top of the botanical park to the bottom and reached the beach, we crossed the railway. There was an old station here but we were not sure if it was used. We did not neglect to take a few photos while driving over the tracks towards the bus location. There was an old pier on the beach right next to us. We wanted to go there too, but it wasn't very safe.
We got on the bus and went back to the city. We stopped by a historical church for a few minutes. I do not know the sect of Georgian Christians, but our guide stated that women are not allowed to enter this church without their head or skirt. Although there were ladies on the tour who did not meet these conditions and they were allowed to enter. I took a look at the garden of the church and said to go through the door and look, but as soon as I stepped in, I gave up when the smell of incense was intense and heavy. At the door was a young priest with a huge black beard and a light blue robe. When I spoke loudly at the entrance of the church, I received a "shhh" warning from one of the young people inside. On my way out, I noticed that the Georgians, passing by the church, stopped and made a cross. That is to say, their customs were like this ..
In order not to waste much time and to have more free time, we took the bus to Post Square. Before we came here, our guide described where to get on the bus on the way back. Watch out here! I will return here towards the end of the article, ringing the ears of the guide.
We got out of the vehicle in Post Square and were left on our own. The surrounding buildings were historic and very ornate. We took a few souvenir photos and spent some time. As we descended towards the beach, we came to a smaller square with a park in the middle and a statue with water gushing from all sides. Along the street that passes through the part of this square towards the beach, there were apartments of the same size with balconies painted like a color palette. There were also historical buildings overlooking the park. Unfortunately, we could not get detailed information because the articles are not in Latin letters. We rested a little in this park and went to the beach.