With countries around Europe reducing coronavirus restrictions, opening borders and creating new ways to ensure safe travel for visitors, summer holidays to Europe are becoming a realistic possibility for relief-seeking travelers.
The Georgian government announced that domestic tourism can resume from 15 June while borders could open to foreign tourists as early as 1 July.
This country has beautiful mountains, dependable snow, hearty food and welcoming people. Now they just need to decide how to build a tourism industry.
I was descending a Georgian mountain pass in a rented Renault Duster when, rounding a curve with six-foot snow drifts to either side, a dark and narrow tunnel came into view. Looking down the mountain, I could see the other end of it — and an apparently endless convoy of eighteen-wheelers making their way up, entering in the opposite direction. I couldn’t imagine how we’d fit alongside each other, but I pressed on, only to find myself in a black hole. The headlights illuminated nothing. I rolled down the window — one of those useless things you do when beginning to panic — and realized that we were in a cloud of black truck exhaust so thick it was blinding.
When archaeologists last year found traces of winemaking on 8,000-year-old pottery shards in Georgia, the tiny former Soviet republic claimed the crown as the world’s oldest wine producer.
It was an affirmation for many long-standing fans of the country and its winemaking tradition, which is ancient and, at the same time, a grassroots movement.
