Our first initiative in the morning was to get to a church partway up into the mountains surrounding the town. There are a couple different ways to get there, but we tried driving up the steep, unplowed town streets for a while. I was behind the wheel, being the only one with any experience driving in snow, but it became clear that this strategy wasn't going to work. Every car we saw was a hugely lifted minivan with at least a foot of ground clearance on huge tires, and certainly 4wd. Our Toyota Corolla was the opposite of that. I made it pretty far before deciding that we should turn back, when an old guy in a Toyota 4Runner came up to us and started trying to talk. I'm not really sure what he was trying to say, but it didn't matter much since we were headed down regardless. When we got to the bottom, we saw that he'd followed us and it became clear that he was offering to drive us to the top. We paid about $20 total and got into the 4Runner. The road was in many places entirely ice, and in others covered by almost a foot of snow, but somehow we made it up the steep switchbacks. On multiple occasions I thought we'd have to turn around, but we never did and I'm left with a new respect for the 4Runner.

At the top, it became clear that this is a somewhat common tourist spot in the summer, but not at all this time of year. There was a little gift shop and a small snack shack thing, but both were obviously closed. It was easy to understand why there weren't many other tourists here - the brutal cold combined with biting winds made for a difficult experience. But in a way, I think that made it all the more beautiful. The view across the valley was incredible and I've never seen anything quite like this anywhere else in my travels. At one point, I decided to retreat from the wind into the church, but found that there were a bunch of people there and they were having Sunday church as if this was a perfectly normal part of their routine. Sure enough, when I looked back down at the road, there were now a bunch of cars lined up along it. Georgians are built different, I guess.

Back at the bottom, we thanked our driver and got some food. There were a few things we wanted to see up even closer to the Russian border, so we drove all the way up to customs, stopping along the way to take pictures. Right at the border there's a monastery. We walked in and were greeted by a very friendly and seemingly very lonely monk who was more than happy to show us around the building. He took us to their wine cellar and shared a recent batch of their wine with us - I thought it was ok, but someone who likes wine would have probably loved it. The monk clearly didn't want us to go and took advantage of Natasha's talkativeness to keep us there as long as possible, but eventually Alexis and I managed to get us out of there. It was true that we didn't have all the time in the world, especially since I wanted to take the train out to Armenia that night.

We didn't do too much else on the trip back. I had the unfortunate role of driving along the one way road from yesterday, which was now no longer one way despite not really being any wider. There were still a ton of huge semi trucks coming toward us and the road was often too narrow for us to fit side by side, so I had to identify the spots where it wouldn't be possible to to fit through and then stop to wait for an opening. Forcing your way through a near endless line of semi trucks on too-narrow, icy roads that drop off into sheer cliffs is a challenge, to say the least. There were a few parts where the asphalt in the right lane just sort of ended and I'd have to drive very cautiously through muddy ditches for a few minutes. Cornering was also scary since I'd have no way of knowing what the road would look like around the bend and whether or not there would be a huge semi truck making a very wide turn, but by going very slowly nothing happened. There was also the confusing dilemma of the tunnels that often ran parallel to the road - oncoming traffic would sometimes come out of the tunnel, and sometimes out of the outside road, and I'd obviously have preferred to be driving in the one that didn't have oncoming traffic. But there was no way to tell which was which, so I'd usually choose the outside road since then I'd at least be able to see a little bit ahead of time. Our headlights also didn't work, so I was reluctant to drive in the dark tunnels anyway.

Anyway, despite a few close calls, we made it out of the mountains and I gave Alexis the keys. I was more than happy to let him drive the Tbilisi section (Ann didn't seem interested in driving and Natasha had shown herself to be a terrible driver, as apparently all Italians are). That proved prudent since driving around Tbilisi seemed to be a miserable and frustrating experience, but eventually we did get the car parked back where we got it without any damage. Georgian drivers are truly terrible and have no idea how anyone can possibly do this regularly.

I'd read that the train was at 10, so I dropped my stuff off at the others' hostel and left to go to the station to buy a ticket. On my way there, though, I noticed that the official website listed the departure time at 8 rather than 10, and it was almost 8. I realized there was no way to get my stuff from the hostel and back to the train station in time to catch it, so I went back and booked another night. I guess I'll catch a bus to Yerevan in the morning, but I won't have very much time there. Anyway, Ann showed me and Natasha a restaurant she really liked in the area. It was really good and I've actually been loving Georgian food. They had these mushrooms stuffed with cheese and slightly spicy peppers stuffed with some sort of walnut paste that were awesome. Hopefully I'll be able to make some of this stuff when I get back to the US.