Take mineral baths, relax your entire body down to your head, indulge in aromatherapy or steam in a sulfur bath – all this can be done in Georgia
According to unspoken opinion, as Gazeta.ru notes, people go to Georgia not so much for tourist service as for a taste of life: khinkali, pkhali, khachapuri; wine and mimino, after which you need to rest somewhere separately. In reality, it's not quite like that (at least not entirely – because no one has ever left this land dissatisfied from khinkali and kindzmarauli) – you can have a great spa vacation here and even relax enough in a couple of days to come to your senses.
Take a mineral bath
If everything goes according to plan, in the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park you will relax even before you reach the mineral baths – three small pools under a sky the color of your monitor's desktop wallpaper (away, away with office associations!) with healing water, where you can get healthier right with a view of the blooming mountains. The water is warm, the periodic table in it is beneficial, the sun is gentle, and there are beach showers nearby. If you don't want to get into the bath completely, you can just wash your face or soak your feet – it's calming anyway.
Getting lost in the park is difficult: on one side of the path is a mountain river, on the other – mountains; sooner or later around the bend a huge athletic Prometheus will appear, guarding the waterfall and pleasing the eyes of tourists. But possibly, if you get too carried away with the walk, then go to the green gazebo – a mineral spring where travelers armed with plastic bottles collect healing water. Then move on to the local architectural landmark: the 'loop bridge', which locals from Borjomi affectionately call the 'snail bridge'.
Lie in a spa and breathe lavender
In Borjomi you can stay in a small old apartment, a student hostel, a post-Soviet boarding house, or a European hotel – wherever you want, in short. But if you are a tired, hardworking city dweller, of course stay in a decent hotel and don't bother your head – you haven't rested enough yet for marginal entertainments. If you stay opposite the snail bridge, then in the evening – right under the starry sky above and with the moral law within – on the balcony of the Crowne Plaza Borjomi (the size of a small European square) you can easily achieve a slight enlightenment.
Your new daily routine enhances the effect: in the morning a light breakfast, good coffee, then eucalyptus sauna, then chamomile sauna, then a swim in the pool, a walk. Another walk, and another, until the local air brings you to a slight intoxication, then massage and spa treatments.
"First your body must accept relaxation, then it will reach your head," say the local spa masters, who have seen more muscle tension in urban workaholics than we have days off. Then dinner, tasting of local wines, and for the first time in a long time a happy sleep – with your last strength you spray a little bottle of lavender oil on your pillow and conk out faster than you can think of anything.
Steam in the ancient sulfur baths of Tbilisi
According to legend, King Vakhtang Gorgasali of Iberia shot while hunting – just like Baron Munchausen – either a pheasant or a deer, which did not want such a fate, but instead wanted to jump back to either pheasants or deer, whereupon it drank sulfur water and was immediately healed. Since then, not only wounded animals, but also exhausted people have visited the famous Tbilisi baths of Abanotubani, with the same hope – to gallop away from here healed and satisfied.
The baths are open 24 hours a day, they smell as sulfur baths should, and they leave an indelible impression – our all Alexander Sergeevich, after steaming in Tiflis, wrote: 'An inexpressible feeling: hot soap pours over you like air! NB: a woolen mitten and a linen bladder must certainly be adopted in the Russian bath: connoisseurs will be grateful for such an innovation.'
If you plan to write something fundamentally different in your travel notes, you can try much more modern water treatments. At the Tbilisi Holiday Inn, for example, there is an outdoor pool with a view of the city – in good weather you can sunbathe there or dream about how you will come back again.