At the risk of sounding repetitive and boring, we awoke to yet another beautiful dawn as we approached the Georgian port of Batumi.

The overnight voyage from Trabzon to Batumi had been a shortish one, but our experience of the country we were about to visit would make the distance seem a lot further in cultural terms.

Batumi is the capital of Adjara, an autonomous republic in southwest Georgia. The climate is sub-tropical. It is affected by the onshore flow from the Black Sea and the mountains which surround it. It also has signficant rainfall all year round, with few extremes of temperature. We were very fortunate to be here on a beautifully sunny, warm and dry day.

The skyline is strange. Not having done any research about the city or the country beforehand, we wondered how to interpret what we were seeing! Our first impression was of a quiet, pleasant, clean and interesting town, despite the odd looking buildings.

The only reference I can find to this structure is that it is a "sculpture with Georgian language as genetic code".

Piazza Square with its distinctly Italian feel is a little incongruous for Georgia, but in Batumi, when it comes to architecture, it seems anything goes! The Square covers about 5700 square metres and is surrounded by the Piazza complex, which includes a hotel, a couple of restaurants, a café and a pub. The architecture is distinguished by mosaics and stained glass art.

The church, built by the Greek community in 1865, was the only church in Batumi to survive the Soviet era without devastation. Though closed in the 1930s, it was reopened after 10-12 years when women petitioned following World War II. Residents came in secret for services in both Georgian and Russian. The exterior was restored in 1998 and the interior in 1999. At that time icons of St. Nicholas, St. George and the Theotokus were brought from the Greek island Khiros.

The Church of the Mother of God is a Georgian Orthodox cathedral, originally built as a Catholic church early in the 1900s. During the Soviet period the church was closed and converted into a high-voltage laboratory. In 1989 the church was transferred to the Georgian Orthodox Church.

After one of the best sunsets of the trip so far, we were in for another treat later that evening. Our cruise director Neil interrupted dinner to tell us that we should make the effort to go on deck to see the blood moon, caused by a lunar eclipse. It was an amazing sight.