In December, my son and I went to Georgia for a week and it was really amazing. I always seem to take forever to write up about my trip afterwards, because during my trip the first few days I post updates, but then I get tired because of traveling, and then once I get home life gets in the way, and these posts take a little longer to write, so they get pushed off…
But anyhow, I was going to go to Malta a few days ago, but my trip unfortunately got canceled. I’d intended to post this before my trip there so I’d at least have finished one country before I wrote about another, but it also didn’t end up happening. So now I get to finish writing this up before my post about the itinerary I’d planned for Malta (because why not share with you what I planned for you to do the same, even if I can’t use it).
I so far have posts about my first 5 days, read about them here, here, here, here, here, and here. So this is about our one full day in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital and largest city.
First off, we stayed in an AirBnB I really liked. It was the most expensive AirBnB of our trip at $72 for 2 nights, but it was worth it and it was by far the nicest of all the ones we stayed on our trip.
There was one room with a living room/dining room/bedroom type feel to it, very gorgeous, very European, with huge ceilings and doors that high as well, reminding me of houses I visited on my trip to Vienna back in 2020.
There was also a large kitchen, and a beautiful bathroom.
There also was another room with a single bed, so it was the only time on our trip that my son and I didn’t share a room, so it was nice to have a little privacy.
The first night we stayed there, there was a little drama. I woke up from my sleep to shouting and screaming and looked outside my window and saw protestors, and smelled rotten eggs. I had heard about the protests about Russia’s influencing the elections and claims of election fraud, and though I knew we were close-ish to parliament we weren’t right there so I didn’t know why there was all the drama.
Until the next morning when someone pointed out that the municipal police headquarters were directly across the street from our AirBnB. That explained a lot.
The next day we went on a free tour of Tbilisi with a guide from Guru walk. I’m pretty sure this is the tour we booked, but we ended up being guided by Mariam’s friend, not her.
After our disastrous first tour in Batumi where the guide really struggled with English (but was in denial about it) and really didn’t answer most of my questions, just kept telling me to Google things for more info, this totally made up for it, and made me glad I didn’t entirely give up on official tours for our trip.
If I’m not mistaken (the trip was 5 months ago by now), the guide had studied English in university as well as history, so he was a wealth of information, our own walking talking Wikipedia.
We started our tour at the Metekhi Church, at least 800 years old, probably much older, where we learned about Georgian history and what communism did to the religious sites in Georgia.
The walking tour usually includes a cable car up to the Mother of Georgia statue, but the cable car was not operating, so it made me glad we did the cable car in Kutaisi, so we could go on one of Georgia’s many famous Soviet era cable cars.
When taking the cable car up you see the Narikala fortress and the botanical gardens, but since we didn’t go up there, our guide made a new tour route for us, factoring in what interested us. I didn’t get pictures of everything, but some of them.
This is the iconic Peace bridge over the Kura River that divides the capital.
This is the Museum of the History of Tbilisi.
A statue of a Georgian poet in front of a very dilapidated looking building…
We went to the Meidan Bazaar, an underground market in a tunnel, that is a cross between a tourist shop, museum, antique shop, food market, and more.
There was just so much to photograph there, things that highlighted traditional Georgian life and its history.
We ended up coming back after the tour to do some souvenir shopping there.
We walked along the roads along the river and in the old city of Tbilisi, and he showed us where the sulfur baths were. I had looked into going into a hot spring in Georgia, since the country is famous for theirs, but I found out that the ones in Tbilisi are either low cost separate men and women (and often many people nude) or there are ones that are pricy and a private spa.
The separate one didn’t seem appropriate since we were traveling together (not to mention sending a teenaged boy alone into a pool with many nude strangers(, and the private one felt very intimate and sexual if it was just two people, also something not appropriate for a mother and son traveling together. So when I heard about the Vani hot springs, we did that already on our first day in Georgia, so got our taste of Georgian sulfur baths in a way that was appropriate.
We learned about the Georgian Orthodox Church, something I was completely unfamiliar with, and he was great at answering me things about how it differed from other Orthodox churches, and how they differed from Western Christianity.
He showed us some really, really old churches such as the Sioni Cathedral and the Jvari’s Mama church.
He told us about the religious tolerance in Georgia, how there are churches, mosques, and synagogues within a stone’s throw of each other, and how there is peace between the communities.
We got to stop in the synagogue and see the sanctuary- unlike many synagogues around the world this one is open to the public, which shows how safe it is in Georgia in terms of antisemitism, and that was beautiful.
It was a beautiful synagogue and a beautiful sanctuary.
We walked along streets and alleys filled with restaurants that reminded me of somewhere, but I can’t put my finger on them.
Any ideas? What do these remind you of?
I don’t remember what this building is, but it’s a cool one.
There were lots of statues all over, whimsical ones. Our tour guide told us that they were characters from children’s stories, and I thought it was really sweet.
We saw this clock tower, which I unfortunately don’t have a picture of, which was part of a puppet theater and was very whimsical as well.
Our tour guide showed us this statue of a Tamada, a toastmaster, and explained to us about the toasting culture in Georgia. works in Georgian culture, which is pretty beautiful.
We learned that Georgia is one of the oldest continuously wine-producing countries in the world, with over 8,000 years of winemaking history. They’re quite proud of their wine — and also of chacha, a type of brandy made from the leftovers of the winemaking process.
Traditionally, a kantsi, a wine horn, is used to make toasts, by the toastmaster and everyone else, and has a special place in the family home. It often is passed on as an inheritance to people’s children. It can be an animal horn or made of clay.
After that, our tour was over, and I happily paid our tour guide 40 GEL, about $15, for a really lovely 2.5 hours.
Once the tour was over, my son and I went back to Meidan Bazaar and because of what we learned on the tour, I decided to buy myself a drinking horn. I also bought some Georgian wine.
Unfortunately, when I tried to make a toast with the horn the next day on our last night in Georgia, I saw they didn’t make it intended to be used, because it not only leaked from where the horn met the metal at the top, it also leaked from the bottom. Oh well. At least the wine tasted delicious and I have a cool souvenir.
Before we left Tbilisi, since it we only had one day left in Georgia and it would be packed with driving (more on that next post) we stopped at a restaurant and I got my son a traditional Georgian dish, khachapuri, Georgian cheese and egg filled bread. I had to just watch him eat it, since it was all the foods I cannot eat- gluten, eggs, and dairy. But he enjoyed it.
For me, our full day in Tbilisi was either my favorite or second favorite day in our entire trip (tied with the day we visited the Mtirala rain forest), and I highly recommend a visit there, including a tour. Entirely, entirely worth it.
Have you ever been to Tbilisi? What was your favorite thing about it? Favorite place you saw, thing you did, etc? How would you have reacted to find out that there was a massive protest right underneath your AirBnB window?
Ever eaten khachapuri? Did you like it?
