On the Bus: Day Two

This is Part II of the “On the Bus” series. Read Part I here.

The hotel in Kutaisi had Soviet-era solidity with a “peasants takeover the palace” kind of décor. I didn’t have hopes for breakfast, which was a good thing because with regular stuffing at lunch and dinner, doing nothing but sitting on a bus for seven hours, you have to cut the calories somewhere. That didn’t work. The food over-delivered. Avoiding shitty Georgian coffee by going for the inky Turkish, I looked around at the faces and remarkably, no one seemed hungover. The gang was positively bouncy. Perhaps all ill effects from yesterday’s chacha assault vanished when all were enthralled to see our leader John Wurdeman happily dipping into the tangy matsoni (yogurt) and hunks of fresh, yeasty shoti, surpassed expectations. The only evidence of his previous night’s fall was the bulky white bandage that looked like a white iced cupcake fastened to his ear.