Resting up in Batumi by Jeremy Seal

On the Black Sea shingle at Sarpi, there were deckchairs at 1 lari a pop, a statutory pedalo plodding by and a beach hawker crucified by the pink rubber rings slung along the shoprails of his arms. We had come here, ten kilometres south of Batumi, on my Georgian friend Zozo's recommendation.

“Much cleaner than the town beaches,” he had urged us - without mentioning that the beach also lies right on Georgia's fortified border with Turkey. Queueing lorries from Vladikavkaz and Baku incessantly gunned their engines. Beyond the concrete border arrangements, I could see a single minaret poking from the next headland. And though the beach was clean and the water warm, I passed up the swimming lest a sudden current carried me into a watery no-man’s-land. I was not prepared to spark a diplomatic incident dressed in nothing more than swimming shorts borrowed from a man called Zozo.

But Batumi soon proved to offer more than a singular out-of-town beach experience. There's probably no better place to recover from the rigours of independent travel in the Caucasus than this attractive, even elegant port city. Unlike most Black Sea cities, which fail spectacularly to live up to their billings - Odessa turns out to be a container port, and the fabled towers of Trebizond, or Trabzon in Turkey, prove largely non-existent - Batumi has leafy avenues lined by fin-de-siecle facades of iron filigree, stucco and aged brick. Horse-drawn droskhis work the shady parks and the promenades where a line of outdoor restaurants face the beach, offering cheap shashlik kebab, chips, salad and beer. There's a wonderful oriental sweet shop on Gamsakhurdia Street where we took glasses of tarhun, the popular tarragon syrup cordial, whose Arabesque interior is a confection of mirrors and marble floor, chandeliers and gilt walls, with stalactite cornicing featuring naked maidens and lions' heads, all encrusted with stained glass in yellows, reds and blues.

But Batumi is not merely a faded resort. The capital of Ajaria, an autonomous republic within Georgia's borders, it has recently grown rich on customs receipts which can lend it a brash, even alarming countenance. Brand-new Mercedes cars drop men in black suits at the doors of heavily guarded gun shops selling everything from hunting rifles and ornamental muskets to AK-47s. There's also a glitzy nightclub called Dianaland, which the Bradt Guide to Georgia, one of the few guidebooks to the country, mistakenly claims is a shrine to the Princess of Wales. It's no such thing; as the doorman explained, the club is named after its owner - who happens to be the daughter of the Ajarian leader, Aslan Abashidze. Not much, it seems, happens here without Abashidze's say.

Best news for visitors are the many new hotels which have sprung up, charging thoroughly reasonable rates, which comes as a considerable relief after the exorbitant accommodation on offer in Tbilisi; try the Hotel L Bakuri. But visitors should beware that some of these establishments offer services of a specific nature to businessmen, and expect their guests to avail themselves of them.

Which means avoiding those hotels which are fronted by heavies in fatigues and sunglasses, especially if the foyer abounds with curiously unattached women in evening dress and heavy maquillage, like the Alik on Memed Abashidze Avenue. Finding yourself on the wrong end of a misunderstanding with the guys who run these places might just spoil your time in Batumi.