Wednesday was deemed to be a rest day rather than having any big adventures planned so we started in leisurely fashion with a hotel breakfast. The coffee was rather weak but the food excellent- a wide range of sweet and savoury; salads, home grown fruit, homemade preserves and fresh pancakes and waffles. Most days, this would have been something of a culinary highlight!

Martyn and I walked up the hill directly behind Stepantsminda in the morning to St Elias the Prophet (Elijah) monastery – neither of us are very good at sitting all day. The views of Gergeti Trinity church and of Mt Elias behind the chapel are wonderful, though Mt Kazbeg itself was in cloud again.

There are two tiny chapels close to one another, a little unprepossessing from outside but with beautiful frescoes inside, telling Bible stories and stories of the saints’ lives in the way we might see in stained glass, in churches at home. Some need a little research to understand, like the story of St Ignatius of Antioch, whose heart was left intact after he’d been devoured by lions, because of his faith. I’m not sure what to make of the difference in the reactions of the two bystanders!

Both churches have beautiful Nativity scenes with Jesus’ birth taking place in a cave, rather than the stable more familiar to us. I particularly like the flowers, rather like those in Mille-fleurs tapestries, in the left hand scene.

We had coffee in town and visited the tourist information centre, picking up some useful maps before heading to the Cosy Corner restaurant, just across the bridge, for mushroom soup for lunch. In fact lunch was so good, that we went back there for dinner, after an afternoon spent relaxing. The food is typical hearty Georgian fare, well designed for sharing, tapas-style; Ostri (beef and tomato stew), Lobio (beans cooked in a clay pot) Adjapsandali (aubergine and vegetable stew) and Mushroom Ojakhuri (cooked with potato and herbs), all served with crusty bread. We treated ourselves to a bottle of delicious Aleksandrouli Qvevri red wine too, getting in practice for our next destination.