Roadtrip: Tbilisi, Georgia

I'm still catching up on our road trip we did in August, the 4000km is just the road itself, as we also drove within the cities we ended up driving close to 5000km. We stayed 3 night in Tbilisi, Georgia. We loved the city, here are a few of my favorite photos.

The old town has beautiful detailed wooden building, most do need some repair.

Generally the city is very green, I love green cities, makes it all so much friendlier.

The city has lots of beautiful details, we absolutely loved it and are planning to go back there soon.

This was the most touristic part of the city, but as soon as you walked a street or two back there wasn't a soul around. There were not many tourists, hardly anyone spoke English.

And even though we found the people grumpy, we loved the atmosphere of the city. It was clean and kind of magical.

We saw several beautiful mosaic details in buildings, and I loved this hand.

There are also some modern buildings of course.

The river Kura goes right through the city, so you often see the water, the city is built around it and ha plenty of bridges. We took a little boat trip on it. As it was still August and very hot we went early evening which was perfect as we also got the lovely light of nearing sunset. 

Most bridges were old, this one was very contrasting new but I loved the mixture of the old and the new. 

Some streets were like a green oasis, a relief also to get away from the hot sun. Tbilisi was much warmer than we anticipated and also humid, we won't go there again in the middle of the Summer.

A lot of the beautiful old buildings were in desperate need of repair and were empty, I do love the abandoned look but in time those buildings do get sadder which is a shame.

We almost drove across the entire country of Georgia, we loved Tbilisi the most, we also loved its flea market and beautiful antiques :))) I still have a few places to share from our long trip!

Miami

My final post of our vacation! I hope I did not bore you but in 5 weeks we did so much and I wanted to share the highlights at least.
Our final 3 days we spent in Miami, and what is Miami without fancy flashy red sports cars, Palmtrees and beaches :)?

When we first arrived in Miami from Turkey we were too jetlagged to really check out the city.

Miami is huuuuge, very flat and endlessly big. Actually, various towns got glued to Miami, like Miami Beach which is a separate town. It is however pretty green for a city which does make it pleasant. It is also a vibrant, hard working and well organized city, where the main language is Spanish!

We took a hop on hop off bus to enjoy the city without having to drive. Driving here was intense, especially on the toll roads the roads are like roller coasters with locals driving like maniacs and roads splitting and coming together all the time, you can be in a two-lane road one second and all of a sudden it turns in to an 8 lane road and you are on the right side but you have to exit on the left in a few seconds and don't forget that in the US drivers can pass you from both the left as the right, unlike most places in the world. So not for the faint-hearted, or if you really must drive here, take the long ways and avoid the toll roads.

There are many different kinds of neighborhoods, from tiny houses in adorable streets to huge villas right at the water or chic apartments overseeing the ocean, whatever your budget, Miami is not cheap, not as expensive as San Fransisco but not far from it.

While most buildings are low and stretched out there was a bunch of skyscrapers Downtown.

Little Havana, you are better off speaking Spanish than English around here, and this is in a lot of Miami as  Hispanic or Latino makes up 70% of Miami's population. In most shops people started speaking Spanish to me, luckily my Spanish Mum came in handy. I was surprised that many actually did not speak a word English, I guess they did not really need to.

If you want to live around here, you might want to brush up your Spanish, a lot of jobs require you to be bilingual.

Those little train rails are for the so-called Metromower, which are little metro's driving without a driver. A clear attempt to bring relief to the traffic downtown as they are completely free of charge.

Due to various hurricanes, there were not many old buildings left, here is one among the skyscrapers.

This building was still being made, designed by Zaha Hadid, the pre fab concrete parts couldn't be made in the USA so had to be shipped in from Dubai, crazy!!

Lots of chic yachts, if you are really lucky you have a villa right near the water with your yacht parked in front :D

The Art Deco district was built up during the redevelopment “boom” that followed the 1926 Miami hurricane “bust.”

With simpler architecture that the more detailed buildings before that and the smaller windows to keep the heat down. Amazingly, these buildings were almost destroyed by developers in the early 1970s. Their survival is due to a handful of activists who, in 1976, founded the Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL). With their help, a number of the best Miami hotels, and even some South Beach clubs have maintained their beautiful façades and historical designation.

So many balconies and not a single person enjoying it :/

There is also a Graffiti district, normally this area would be boring gray buildings but now it is colorful and full of hipsters.

This is a cement factory, they painted these as spray cans to match the surrounding.

I saw some awesome ones that I was not able to photograph from the bus, but we wanted to have a lazy day so we actually did not hop off from the bus.

Our last day, Tuesday the 8th we stayed in the hotel and I puzzled all our luggage. 8 suitcases of 23 kg each (50 lbs) and two carry all of 10 kg each, and our handbags with laptop and such, yes like last year we went crazy with thrifting :). The 2 planes got us home at 11 pm the 9th, and we are now finally over our jetlag  :D We had such a great time and would do it in a heartbeat all over again!