We woke up early in our hotel in Kazbegi and everything was as quiet as it could be. I got out of bed and pulled back the curtains to see where we were in the world, since we had arrived late yesterday in a snowstorm. It turned out that we were in the mountains and flanked by towering mountains. From our bed in our hotel room, we could see Mount Kazbek at 16,581 feet above sea level and Mount Shani at 14,603 feet, plus many other peaks. Clouds were drifting in and out as was the sun. It was a fabulous live action scene, right from our hotel room.

The official name of Kazbegi is Stepantsminda, which means Saint Stephan. It comes from the Orthodox monk who constructed the hermitage here in medieval times. The Soviets officially renamed it Kazbegi. Either way, it's a small town of under 5,000 people in the far northeast of Georgia. It's about 7.5 miles from the Russian border and about 96 miles due north of Tbilisi. You can see much of the town below.

In the next photo, if you look on a plateau on the left center of the photo, you can notice the Gergeti Trinity Church, which was on our agenda to visit on this day. And yes, we did get up there for a visit, via four-wheel drive vehicles. You can see a closeup in the following photo.

We've found ourselves in some fabulous places in our travels, but this was both fabulous and surprising. We loved it.

We still had to eat, of course. I'll give you a glimpse of our night's dinner which was in the hotel. We had a tomato, cheese, olive and cucumber salad, a separate Greek salad, 4 dips for our pita bread, fried chicken with potatoes, bread, Khachapuri's (meat pies), a vegetable ragu, and a rice and vegetable dish (not all pictured). For dessert, we had a variety of petit fours and a fruit plate plus tea.