Zugdidi is a small city located not far from the Black Sea in western Georgia. We reached it by railroad from Gori. In another language snafu, we were waiting for the right train on the platform in Gori just before it was due to arrive. The nearby track was free, and a train headed toward Tbilisi passed through. A stationary freight train was on the second track. While I paced back and forth, a railroad employee approached me speaking Russian. I got her switched to English which she spoke well enough and she asked where we intended to go. I told her we were going to Zugdidi, and she immediately motioned in the direction across the tracks. "Platform 4." It being nearly train time, we hurriedly found the underpass that connected platform 1 to platform 4 where we needed to be. Very soon the train pulled in and we climbed aboard.

The railroads were the major mode of long distance transportation in the former Soviet Union, and they still exist mostly in their pre-collapse form. Like those of the post-Yugoslavian republics, the ones in Romania and Bulgaria, the railroad in Georgia weaves its way through old redidential areas that are characterized by peeling paint and stucco and crumbling masonry. Old industrial areas full of rusting metal towers, chimneys, bulidings and tall fences and by overgrown lots surrounding them are also much on display. It seems much easier to build amew on vacant land and to leave the old factories and shops to the elements than to disassemble them to make way for the new. Unlike the trains in some former Soviet Republics, the one we were riding sported very new, modern and very comfortable cars. Quite different indeed from the train we once rode in Romania from Calafat on the Danube to Craiova which only had hard wooden seats and a "toilet" that was nothing but a small closet with a large hole in the floor. That train trundled along the decrepit tracks at some 20 mph, but our train in Georgia made at least 45 or 50 and arrived mid-afternoon.


The station has only a couple trains each day.


And it's usually nearly deserted.

Most accomodations in Georgia are not hotels. Instead, they are called "guesthouses" and are most like a B&B where one has a small, sometimes windowless room and shares the bathroom with the other guests and the family who own the place. Most also come with meals which are very unlikely to include the vegetables containing vitamin K that Regina requires. So we sought out standard hotels to stay to provide the option to search elsewhere for our meals.

Our Georgia guidebook lists but one hotel in Zugdidi, a small city of some 45,000 souls, but we had found and booked a room at one of two others listed on a hotel bookings website (only discovered after a long and mostly fruitless search). Arriving from the railroad station by taxi, we pulled up in front of a very new building where the rooms are spacious and the amenities more than adequate.

Downsides also exist while staying at a new hotel. The staff was less than fully competent at the most fundamental of hotel tasks; the internet connection was intermittent; worst, the hotel restaurant turned out to be on the floor above us. And a good resataurant it was. That wasn't the problem. The new hotel restaurant is apparently the place of choice for locals to hold wedding receptions and other party-like events. One was in progress when we returned from having our dinner at a fine restaurant at the far end of the long park that spans the length of the downtown area. Now Georgian ladies are a bit old fashioned (or upper-fashionable, take your pick). When they go out to a party, they dress formally and wear high heeled shoes, the heels of which are as hard as iron. And those high heels dancing incessantly made "clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clack, clack, clack" noise over and over on the hard terrazzo floor just over our heads and all in perfectly time and unison with the rather lound boom-box recorded music that we also heard. One can't really demand an end to the party, or to the dancing. And one can't gain respite by changing rooms, because the restaurant spans them all. So we did our best to get bear the annoyance until the party finally ended.

Zugdidi turns out to have little of interest for outsiders, despite its sizable population. After walking back to the railroad station to get a sense of the place, we found only a large market/bazar stradling the main road.

Like many older cities, stores selling types of merchandise are collected together. Here furniture row.

The guidebook doesn't list this small hotel.

We also found a McDonalds restaurant at the far end of the long park where we noticed that they sell beer as well as burgers. A middle aged woman with two teenaged children helped us to place our order with the counter man who spoke no English and evidently didn't understand pointing either. After we took seats to eat, the woman approached us and ask to sit and talk with us. She had taught herself English, together with an internet friend, and wanted to practice with us. We had a delightful conversation with her during which we learned that she is a school teacher in Zugdidi.

Despite a dearth of other interests, Zugdidi can claim the Dadiani Museum as an attraction. The museum is housed in the castle-like palace formerly the palace of the Dadiani family who were lords of that part of Georgia. The grounds surrounding are equisitely manicured, and the interesting topiary is extensive.

Walking around the town to get a feel for the place led us into the neighborhoods and to several parks.


The newer parts of the city near the hotel contain relatively new apartment blocks in the Soviet style.

This expression of civic pride is one of the few signs that we could understand (besides roadsigns, of course.)