Q:  How do you tell you are in a third-world country?
A:  Street vendors selling single cigarettes.
Batumi is definitely third-world.  There is lots of construction going on and the streets and sidewalks are so torn up as to just about impassable.  Adele thinks the streets were just bad, but it looked to me as if they were putting in sewers, telephone cables, etc. 
Once we got out into the main boulevard, though, there were scads of vendors in stalls and stores offering just about everything you could think of – including single cigarettes, of course.  For the hard-core smoker, they also were selling bulk tobacco – I suppose for roll-your-own smoking.  The stuff didn’t look like cigarette tobacco, though.  It was shredded into long fibers and dried.
The people were very friendly.  They all asked us if we were Germans.  When we explained we were Americans, out came the smiles and handshakes.  Some had a few words of English, so we got along OK.  Correction, I should say the men were friendly.  The women acted as if we smelled bad, even when Adele was trying to buy something from them.
We walked around for an hour or two, seeing the same stuff for sale in different booths.  The only thing that looked really good was the vegetables.  I was tempted to buy some tomatoes to use in salads instead of the colorless things they give us on the ship.  We then picked our way back to the ship through what Adele called the “war zone” of torn-up streets.

Batumi Photos