The Fifth Annual 2010 Georgian Monastery Tour is now taking applications (details, here.) I have never been a real "tour person," and I generally still hold to my reservations about them--but this undertaking is the shining exception. I highly recommend the monastery tour led by my friends Luarsab Togonidze and John Ananda Graham. Those who have had the great fortune to visit Georgia are invariably changed by the experience. In one sense, my own life can be divided into 2 parts--before I visited Georgia, and then everything afterwards. We are all suffering through some very tough economic times. But Georgia remains one of the best travel bargains around, and this tour is simply the best of the best, in my book. I'd better stop now--I'm starting to gush.
I shared this with my priest and our parish email list. Our Cathedral boasts one of the largest Georgian contingents in the country and the largest Georgian language library outside of Georgia - according to the Georgian President's wife on her visit here just before the war with Russia. The translators of St. Herman Press's book on Georgian saints are parishioners, and friends - the wife is studying Georgian musicology (PhD) at Columbia.
ReplyDeleteGod willing, some day... I envy your travels, but love your blogging about them.
ReplyDeleteOrr, I think I know, but could you tell me the name and location of the cathedral church? Please tell your friends how much the St. Herman's Book on Georgian Saints is appreciated. I am currently re-reading it. One the tour leaders, Luarsab Togonidze, contributed to the book, and I know he also researches and writes historical articles for the Patriachial publications there in Tbilisi.
ReplyDeleteI too am not keen on the idea of organised tours and I have eschewed them very snobbishly in the past but I realise now as a single woman there are many places I will never see unless I take advantage of them.
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