BATUMI, GEORGIA
Batumi is a city on the Black Sea Coast which has the mildest winters of any former Soviet location (USDA Zone 9b--with the average coldest night in each winter typically in the mid to upper 20s F). The climate is warm enough to support quite a variety of palms, eucalyptus and various other subtropics (from other places; for example, no palms are actually native to Georgia). Batumi has recently developed a bit of a Las Vegas mentality with many casinos and hotels have been built. The countryside around Batumi is very lush, as the area receives about 100 inches of rain per hour.
Go here for the pictures just outside Batumi (including the vast botanical gardens). Below are pictures within or of the city itself.
A view of Batumi from a distance (from the botanical gardens to the northeast)...
The beach at Batumi (note that's Alphabetic Tower to the right)...
The beach at dusk (note the cobbles instead of sand)...
Another beach pic...
Ships in the harbor...
A branch of the harbor...
The boardwalk...
Bikes for rent from an automated machine...
A small and short pier (waves aren't usually as high on the Black Sea as in the Pacific)...
View from the pier back towards the city, including the new Batumi Tower...
A fountain in Batumi near the city center...
A small plaza in Batumi...
A street lined with Mexican fan palms (like in Southern California)...
There were colored lights on some of the buildings at night...
The Alphabetic Tower after dusk (with the silhouettes of half-dead kudzu-covered trees)...
Back to the day...an oddity in Batumi...the Chacha Tower. Chacha is the Georgian national drink; it's a type of brandy. The Chacha Tower has fountains which dispense from chacha at 7 PM most nights, for 5 minutes. People can bring whatever sort of cup or container that they wish for the chacha (including bottles).
Almost 7 PM...
People getting their drink (including at least one who's clearly a minor!)...
This is what chacha looks like (though the taste wasn't to my liking)...
A couple people dancing after consuming the chacha...
Back a few blocks from the main action where a lot of large old apartment buildings, and some smaller buildings for housing...
One quirky thing in Batumi (but I didn't see this anywhere else in Georgia)...their traffic lights turn yellow both when going from green to red and when going from red to green! Hence, they'll be yellow in all directions! In parts of Europe, traffic lights will have both the red and yellow lights shining at the same time before turning green, but here the red light turns off before even turning yellow!
Go here for Batumi, Part II (around Batumi).
All of the above pictures on this page were taken in September 2013 by Brandt Maxwell.
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