Exploring Tbilisi - Narikala Fortress

Hello friends it has always been a great feeling to write here at erasmusu. Today I was having a look at some pictures of me and my friends taken at the Narikala Fortress in Tbilisi and I thought I would share with you all about that awesome experience. We wanted to have a get together on a weeked with all our classmated therefore we planned for this small trip to Narikala located in Tbilisi. Narikala is a fortress built during the ancient times overlooking the city of Tbilisi. It is said that the fortress was first established in the 4th century and later expanded in the 7th century by the King David The Builder. The Mongolian invaders renamed the fortress as Narin Qala which means little fortress. The fortress suffered severely during earthquakes and most of its parts were destroyed.

We began our journey from a metro station near our home. After all of us gathered we went into a nearby supermarket to get some stuffs to eat on our way to Narikala. The journey is short, we boarded a metro train and got down at a station called Avlabari. A 10 minutes walk from there will take us to the cable car station that is located near the peace bridge. The cable car services opened just a few months back and it costs only 0.20GEL for students. We all got into a cable car and the journey was awesome. We were able to get a superb view of the city from the cable car. It gently ascended upto the leavel of the fortress and from above all the roofs were orange with cars moving beneath us it was super cool. After getting down at the metro all that we were able to see was remains of the old fortress. From above we were able to get a perfect view of the city with all prominent structures such as the peace bridge, newly opened public service hall, trinity church and so on. There is also the newly built Saint Nicholas church that is built over the place where the old church stood. The old church of saint Nicholas was destroyed during a fire accident. There is a huge statue which appears to be a woman overviewing the city of Tbilisi. There are steps near the statue to climb upto the level of her legs. There are some steep steps and we thought of hiking. The other side of the fortress is the National Botanical Garden Of Tbilisi which by itself is an important place to visit. Climbing down the steep steps carefully we were able to get down somewhere in the middle of the Botanical Garden. The Botanical Garden lies in the Tsavkiss Tskali gorge on the foothills of Sololaki range. There are more than four thousand different species of plants found in this Botanical Garden covering an are of 160 hectares. I have visited this garden many number of times and it is especially good to visit during spring and summer. There is a big waterfall inside the Botanical garden and there is a vast place for you to hike and explore different vareities of plants, flowers etc. We started to hike around the paths of Botanical Garden and finally found a place with benches. We decided to have a little snack there like a picnic. So we unpacked the food stuffs that we bought from the supermarket and shared it with everyone having fun chatting and teasing each other. After the snack we started to play a game which lasted for sometime. As time passed we became really exhausted so we decided to leave back where we saw an unforgettable scene. We saw an old couple probably in their 80's they were using the same path which we were climbing to reach the Narikala fortress. We were really stunned on seeing them but they gently smiled at us and wished us good luck. Finally we came upto the level of the fortress in the same way. The prominent architectural structure we were able to see was the peace bridge that looks beautiful across the river Mtkvari. There is a little history about this peace bridge. It was actually designed and built by an Italian architect. The bridge was bought to Tbilisi from Italy in 200 trucks and after assembling the bridge over its current position the LED lamps were fixed throughout the bridge. The bridge is illuminated with beautiful white lamps and its really a amazing structure in Tbilisi. This bridge is just for people to walk and from the bridge you can see some important buildings in Tbilisi such as the Presidential Palace. On one bank of the bridge there is a beautiful park with some musical fountain. The bridge and the park gets life only during the night. Its because the bridge glows in light and in the park next to the bridge the musical fountain dances to both Georgian and western music. There is also a big chess board in the park with coins. You can play some real chess game in a bigger way in this park. The park is so artistically designed where you can spend some quality time in the evening without spending any money. Since all these events will happen only during the night we thought of returning back home. So we got onto the cable car again and from there we came down. We just relaxed ourselves a little in the park and then we walked towards the metro station at Avlabari to reach back home. On a whole the trip was fun filled and we had a great time together. Moreover it is a good place if you don't have time and still want to visit something interesting in Tbilisi. Do visit the place if you find some leisure time in Tbilisi. Till I write my next article keep smiling and cheers :) Do mention your comments and suggestions below so that I can improve my future articles. Thank you for reading :)