The smell of seawater hangs heavy in the air. Tank-top clad women, so different from the their Turkish neighbors, stroll proudly down the boardwalk. Sidewalks are lined with trellises covered in twisted grape vines. Ancient men sit together on the street corners playing backgammon. It’s the kind of place we’ve been searching for; a place where you unpack your backpack, buy bottles of wine and fill your day with deliciously decadent activities. So, to celebrate Batumi’s aged romantic vibe (and in the name of all things anti-backpacker), we spent yesterday in the pursuit of decadence.

The day started with breakfast in our room of left-over cheese pie and orange juice. It’s not necessarily a decadent start to the day, unless you know that they came out of our in-room mini-fridge. That’s right. We have a fridge in our room. Total decadence.

The morning’s activity was a short ride south of town: a still intact Roman fortress. The ruins were close enough that we only had to spend just two hours round-trip to see them, thus leaving our afternoon free. For anyone who plans to drink wine for most of the day, sightseeing in the morning is a must.

Lunch was, surprise-surprise, more cheese pie (it seems to be all they eat here), washed down with a local brew. OK, actually it was two big mugs of beer each. But who’s counting?

We were scheduled to play tennis in the late afternoon, so we whiled away the hottest hours of the day (and the lunch buzz) relaxing in our room. Once the sun had passed sunburn time, we headed to the tennis courts dressed in our Wimbledon best. Neither of us have actually played tennis in our adulthood. Needless to say, we were amazing. An hour spent accidentally whacking the ball over the boundary fences – decadent(ly embarrassing)!

Our tennis cool-down session was spent at a restaurant overlooking the sea. A bottle of delicious Georgian red wine later, we were eating more cheese pie and watching the sun set over the Black Sea coast.

It doesn’t happen very often, but every once in a while we have the perfect (anti-backpacker) day.

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I can’t say that I see a future for this dish for people who are on a diet, but it sure goes down well with a bottle of red wine and a Black Sea sunset.

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The fortress is also where the Apostle Matthias, sometimes known as Levi (patron saint of alcoholism, carpenters, smallpox, tailors and Gary, Indiana), lies buried under a neat little rock. Pilgrims sometimes gather around it to read from the Bible and pay their respects. We paid our respects to the pilgrims, by not taking pictures during their ceremony.

All in all Gonio is a nice little distraction from the hedonistic beach town of Batumi. I imagine that come summer, enormous hordes of tourists swarm the fort, leaving a trail of melted ice-cream and cigarette butts in their wake. We just happened to catch it at exactly the right time – spring in Georgia is just awesomely beautiful, and Gonio is no exception.

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I think it’s great when a town shows a bit of age. A few cracks here and a little rust there creates character. Knowing this, it’s no surprise that I’ve fallen in love with Batumi, the popular seaside town on the southern tip of Georgia.

The air feels Mediterranean, the streets are wide, the homes are properly run-down (not crumbling, but romantically cracked) and the sun doesn’t stop shining. OK, it goes down for a while at night, but in the day it’s divine.

Sadly, I’m not the only one to discover Batumi. The bigwigs (Hilton and Sheraton) have moved to town. Their massive hotels are due to be completed in 2011. It seems the town is following suit with a frenzy of rebuilding and refurbishing. Most of the town remains in character with beautifully rusted facades, flanked by impossibly tall grape vines, but change is in the air.

To illustrate my point, I’ve put a photo gallery together that shows both sides of the town – Batumi, new and old.

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The border between Turkey and Georgia was a pretty interesting place in itself. We’ve rarely seen a slacker post. The border crossing area itself consists of a large courtyard, littered with small offices. To get through, you ping and pong back and forth between four or five sleepy officials, one more indifferent than the other. After a while, we emerged with the right stamps in our passports, chartered a rip-off priced minibus (I always get fleeced on the first transport in any new country) and arrived in Akhaltsikhe, a small, cute Georgian border town.

Our first impression: this is a very different place from Turkey. The way people dress, talk and behave are far differently. It’s also intensely beautiful. I mean get-outta-here-you’ve-got-to-be-kidding beautiful.

Unfortunately, our time here is limited – we have airline tickets and hotels booked, so an extended stay is out of the question. The alluring towers and mountains of the Svaneti region beckoned, but visiting that part of the country would mean that we’d have to spend most of our travel time on transports. Instead, we’ve opted to take a decadent holiday by the Black Sea. Things could be worse.

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