Neighbouring countries battle it out in what could be termed a Black Sea derby!
Turkey
In 2015 I visited Georgia overland from Turkey. The journey started in Istanbul – the suburb of Pendik on the Asian side to be exact.
This gave the opportunity to travel on the brand new Marmaray Line which runs 60 metres below the Bosphorus.
From Pendik we travelled to Ankara where we visited Ataturk’s mausoleum whilst we waited for our connection further east to Erzurum.
Georgia
Once we arrived at Erzurum we took a (very uncomfortable) bus the Black Sea resort of Hopa, a minibus to the border and after walking across to Georgia at midnight we took a taxi to Batumi, also on the Black Sea.
Batumi is a strange place, full of follies and karaoke bars. It also rains. A lot. It is said to have more annual rainfall than Iceland! Predictably it tipped it down for the whole time we were there, so we were mighty glad to get on a train to Yerevan.
