Batumi

Batumi is Georgia’s Black Sea summer capital, a subtropical resort town where a palm-lined promenade meets an improbable, playful skyline. Along the seven-kilometre Boulevard a pebble beach runs beside gardens, fountains and some genuinely strange landmarks — the Alphabet Tower spelling out the Georgian script in steel, and the slow-moving steel lovers of the “Ali and Nino” sculpture, who drift through each other every evening. Capital of green, mountainous Adjara, Batumi mixes belle-époque Old Town streets and the Italianate Piazza with a brash strip of casinos and nightlife that has earned it a regional reputation as a playground. Just out of town lie a vast seafront botanical garden and the waterfalls and old stone bridges of the Adjaran hills, and everywhere there is the region’s own boat-shaped acharuli khachapuri, cracked open with butter and egg. Come in summer for the beach and the neon; stay for the mountains and the khachapuri behind them.

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