Italy-Georgia Trip, Day 9

 Alex still had his work conference on Saturday, so he headed out with the big suitcase and his carry-on.  That left me with my carry-on backpack and snacks to cart around after I checked out of the hotel.  I had to check out at 11:00am, so I had about 5 hours to find something to do.  I didn't really want to wander around Venice with my backpack and snacks.  After sitting in the hotel lobby for about 45 minutes, I walked around Mestre for about 1.5 hours.  It was hot and I didn't see anything that particularly caught my attention, so I decided to head back to the bus station.  Took a bus to the airport and then sat there for a few hours waiting for Alex.  At least it was air-conditioned, I could sit down, use wi-fi, and have a free bathroom.  

Our flight was Saturday evening the 21st, with our first flight from Venice to Switzerland.  They had some tasty chocolate as a flight snack.  We had to wait a LONG time in Switzerland to go through customs.  We somehow got in the slowest line.  By the time we made it through, we had to take off running to make our connecting flight.  We did make it and our 2nd flight arrived in Tbilisi, Georgia around 5:00am.  We paid for an expensive taxi to our Airbnb and then had time to nap for about 2 hours.  We then got ready and found our way to church at 11:00am.  We enjoyed attending the church service, which they provided translation for (via headphones).  One of the missionaries was translating into Russian or English, from either Georgian or English, depending on the speaker's language.  I thought that was pretty talented for him to navigate 3 different languages.  

We had planned to get our rental car at noon, right there at the church building.  We found this rental service that would meet you with a car at whatever address you chose.  We had a little snag in securing the car.  The guy showed up as planned with the car, but then he wanted proof that Alex had been driving longer than 2 years.  Since Alex had recently renewed his driver's license, it appeared that he had only been driving for a short time.  We assured the guy that he had over 30 years of driving experience, but they needed proof.  We had to have the kids track down one of Alex's old licenses and take a picture of it.  We couldn't get that until later that night (because of the time difference), but luckily the guy still took our cash, let us take the car (using it at our own risk) and send the picture later. The whole deal seemed a little wonky, but it worked out and we had a car for the week.

We actually walked around Tbilisi the rest of the day after getting back to our Airbnb because the driving was so crazy there.  We wandered all over Tbilisi.  We ran into the senior missionary couple that we met earlier in the day at church.  The city was interesting - beautiful architecture, cobbly streets, and this charm to the city.  Yet there was definitely a lot of graffiti, poverty, and cats and dogs wandering around.  It broke my heart to see some of the poor people sitting on the street trying to sell stuff.  We walked past a lady selling cups of apricots and then felt like we should turn around.  We bought a cup from her and she seemed SO grateful that we bought them.  It nearly brought me to tears thinking about it - she seemed glad that someone had noticed her.  

One of the most amazing places we saw was the Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi.  The lighting was beautiful in the evening.  We also caught a nice view of the city from a church on the hill, but it was a steep walk to get up there.