Day 14 and 15

We walked amongst the celebrants (Tbilisi day) and bought pastry for breakfast, with difficulty because Georgians don’t seem to have sweet pastries with their morning coffee. They have khachapuri – round, pizza-like flat bread topped with cheese or meat. Next we went to the sulfur baths (Gulo’s). He has 5 units and we got the nicest and most spacious unit, which consisted of a lounge with sofas and armchairs, a large room with one hot and one cold pool, two showers and two stone beds for massage, a WC, and a nice sauna. The baths and the sauna were wonderful. Then we walked some more and ended up at the Georgian National Museum. We were hoping to see the 1.8 million years skulls discovered in the Caucasus, in Dmanisis, about 80 km from Tbilisi. Unfortunately, they only had replicas there and some videos about them because the originals are kept in the Dmanisi museum. We also saw an interesting exhibition entitled “Soviet Occupation of Georgia”.Then to dinner (Culinarium) and back to the hotel for our trip to Yerevan. Day 15 We arrived at Yerevan airport 12:30 am after a most harrowing drive. We contracted through the internet for a comfort car to take us from Tbilisi to Yerevan. We specified pick up at hotel at 7 pm. We returned to the hotel after dinner at 6:55. The hotel reception told us the driver had been there since 2:30. We embarked in the nice comfortable van. The driver was fast on the 2 lane Georgian roads even though it was right hand drive. When he pulled out to pass half the car was exposed when he saw it was not safe. He stopped at a roadside market and bought a ton of stuff (produce). He explained it was twice as much in Armenia. We passed many roadside stands with produce along the road – set up specifically to sell to Armenians. The border crossing leaving Georgia was time consuming because there was busload full of people waiting to be processed. Armenian mountain roads were scary -- totally dark, no median line, bumpy and full of potholes and very, very curvy. When we got to the good divided highway his speed was 45 mph (cars were passing us doing 70 and 80) and he put on the brakes and slowed to 20 mph for no reason. Both of us were frightened because we thought he was falling asleep so from time to time Bo would ask him a question in Russian just to make sure he’s awake. We were so relieved when we finally made it to the airport! Two flights were good. On the Doha – LAX flight the seats converted to a bed and they gave us pajamas. A 15 hour flight is long but we both slept. We went through immigration and customs in 5 minutes and were home about an hour after we landed.