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One evening, my friend and I took the funicular to a restaurant on top of one of the hills surrounding Tbilisi. The food is great but more importantly: the view is splendid, especially during the night.

Generally, a lot of effort is put into light installations in Tbilisi, you can find them on various buildings in various colours and forms. If you take a walk you will see what I mean.

 

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On Rustaveli Avenue some houses have blue spotlights highlighting the ornaments and structures of the building. If you go further, you pass Liberty square with its glinting Liberty Monument. After a ten-minute walk through the narrow streets of old Tbilisi you can cross the Peace Bridge. Even though my friends told me Georgians usually dislike it because of its modern design I found it quite fascinating. I felt like being inside a shiny whale skeleton lit up like the Georgian flag. By the way, the current flag is an ancient banner of the medieval Kingdom of Georgia. It was reintroduced in 2004 by then-President Mikhail Saakashvili (2004-2012).

 

 

 

IMG_2403IMG_2421Wherever you are in old and probably also new Tbilisi, if you look up, you see the ‘enlightened’ Narikala citadel ruins from the 3rd century with its still functioning church and another old beaming church on a hill far away in the background. Close to the citadel you can find the sparkling mother of Georgia. The latter is a well-formed woman holding a sword and a cup of wine. These symbolise how Georgia has always had enemies that were welcomed with the sword and friends that were offered a cup of wine.

 

Back then in the restaurant when I mentioned how unique ‘light’ is to Tbilisi my friend started laughing and said: ‘Well, we didn’t have electricity until the mid-90s. Probably that’s why we decided to become the City of Light.’

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