Borjomi Georgia

Famous throughout the former Soviet Union for its salty-sour, love-it-or-hate-it fizzy mineral water, Borjomi is a tranquil resort town surrounded by thickly forested hills in all directions. The 19th-century Russian governor of Georgia, Count Vorontsov, developed Borjomi as a resort after his soldiers discovered a health-giving mineral spring here in 1810, and it became a particularly fashionable one when Grand Duke Mikhail Romanov (brother to Tsar Alexander II) built a palace at nearby Likani in the 1890s.