The next day, we drove north on the Georgia Military Highway to the town of Kazbegi. On the way we stopped at Ananuri, a castle site that contains not one but two churches. The older one was built sometime in the first half of the 17th century, and the "new" one was built in 1689, but they look hundreds of years apart.
The kids loved roaming around the grounds, and so did we. It's hard to believe that we had such open, unguarded access to one of Georgia's national treasures.
The site overlooks the Aragvi River.
There was a wedding on while we were there, which gave us an excuse to take some in-church pictures, which are otherwise generally not allowed in Georgia Orthodox churches. The wedding was pretty casual - people milling about even during the vows, and of course we were there, too. Here's a nice picture Alison took during the ceremony.
Lots of good old walls.
The older church is not used today, even for weddings, and is mostly a shell inside. Alison noticed something on the ceilings and decided to take some time exposures and found some great frescoes hiding in there.
One curious feature of Ananuri's newest church is that it has some nice, intricate details that are basically obscured because it was built so close to the old church. For example, this pomegranate tree.
Although you can see it from inside the old church.
After visiting the church, we had a nice picnic before continuing on our way.
