Tbilisi, Georgia.

I’ve spent years dreaming of Georgia, but fate, in its infinite wisdom, always found ways to keep me away—like some cosmic joke at my expense. I’ve spent months curating the perfect list of things to do there, and now? Well, it’s time to put that list to good use.

5 days itinerary

Day One – Arrival, Sulphur, and Dinner That Doesn’t Try Too Hard

Check-in: Stamba Hotel (late afternoon)
We arrive and disappear into velvet, concrete, and the smell of roasted coffee in the lobby. It’s all retro, rough-edged, and oddly cinematic.

Late afternoon: Walk through Vera district
We start soft: faded mansions, wild ivy, back alleys with bookshops and cafés that might not actually be open. But they are. We sit somewhere and drink something strong.

Evening: Sulphur bath ritual
Down to the Abanotubani district. A private domed bath, blue tiles, steamy air, and a kisa scrub that erases jet lag and memory in equal measure. We emerge slippery, reset, slightly glowing.

Dinner: Shavi Lomi
Lamb slow-cooked in tarragon, warm cornbread, wine that arrives in a carafe instead of a bottle. No show. Just soul. The kind of meal that makes you look at each other like, “OK. We’re here.”

Day Two – Silk, Smoke, and Soviet Echoes

Morning: Dry Bridge Market
It’s part flea market, part ghost story. Soviet pins, Persian carpets, military medals, oil paintings that may or may not be cursed. We buy something we can’t explain.

Late morning: Writers’ House of Georgia
A hidden modernist villa with a literary past and just enough melancholy. We sneak into a room we’re probably not supposed to see. Everything smells like dust and poetry.

Lunch: Cafe Littera (in the garden of the Writers’ House)
Georgian classics, reinvented. Garden shade, homemade lemonade, and a salad that tastes like a landscape.

Afternoon: Chronicle of Georgia (20 min drive)
We drive out to the edge of the city. Giant basalt pillars covered in biblical and Soviet imagery rise out of the earth. No crowds. Just wind, silence, and your own thoughts echoing back.

Dinner: Keto & Kote
A house on a hill, a terrace with a view, and food your grandmother would make—if your grandmother was wildly stylish and good with wine pairings.

Day Three – Churches, Cliffs, and That One Road With No Guardrails

Morning: Day trip to Kazbegi (~3 hours with stops)
We leave early. The road winds through military history and mountain passes. We stop too often to photograph cows in the road and clouds that refuse to stay still.

Lunch: Rooms Hotel Kazbegi
Huge windows, high-altitude air, and a view of Gergeti Trinity Church that steals your appetite for a second. Then it comes back. Stronger.

Afternoon: Hike or don’t
We can walk up to the church. Or sit and watch other people do it. Both valid.

Evening: Return to Tbilisi + late rooftop drink
Back in the city, just in time for the kind of evening that doesn’t need music. Just the lights, the hills, the clink of one glass touching another.

Dinner: Lolita
Stylish, loud, perfect. We share five plates and somehow remember every single one.

Day Four – Wine, Clay, and a Little Bit of Ruin

Morning: Mtskheta + Jvari Monastery (30 min drive)
The ancient capital. Two rivers meeting. Stone churches older than reason. We light a candle, or maybe we don’t. The view is the prayer.

Lunch: Salobie Bia (on the way back)
Beans in clay pots, cornbread, herbs, plum sauce. Casual, cheap, and unforgettable. Nothing here tries to be more than it is—and it wins.

Afternoon: Wine tasting in a Tbilisi basement
Natural wine, low lighting, homemade bread, someone’s cousin telling stories. The wine tastes like stone and fruit and rain. We drink more than we should.

Evening: Reset at the hotel
Bathtub. Silence. A nap that turns into something else.

Dinner: Barbarestan
A 19th-century cookbook brought to life. Crystal glasses, candlelight, recipes older than electricity. Every dish comes with a footnote and a feeling.

Day Five – Fabric, Fire, and a Final Walk

Morning: Fabrika courtyard + coffee
A converted Soviet sewing factory now full of studios, bars, ceramic shops, and quiet corners. We grab coffee and drift through small rooms full of big ideas.

Late morning: Holy Trinity Cathedral (Sameba)
It’s huge. Golden. Intense. Still smells like beeswax and incense. We stare up until our necks hurt. Worth it.

Lunch: Art-Cafe Home
Feels like visiting someone eccentric with very good taste. Every plate, painting and sofa has a story. We stay longer than planned.

Afternoon: Final walk along the river
We pass back through old streets. Balconies leaning, paint peeling, cats sleeping. Tbilisi fades the way it welcomes: slow, strange, warm.

Evening: Airport, maybe one more churchkhela for the road
One last glass. One last bite. One last something sweet wrapped in nuts and memory.