7 nights / 8 days · Georgia

Georgia with Batumi

The full width of the country — Tbilisi, two nights on the Black Sea at Batumi, then Mtskheta, Kakheti and Kazbegi from the capital.

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Duration: 7 nights / 8 days
Where you stay: Tbilisi → Batumi
Style: Multi-city
From: AED 5,234per person

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About this trip

The only package that reaches the sea. It opens with the Tbilisi old town on the afternoon you land, then drives west the next morning, breaking at the Prometheus cave near Kumistavi and arriving in Batumi for two nights. Batumi is the strange one: palm trees, a nineteenth-century seafront boulevard, an Italianate square and a botanical garden of 108 hectares looking down on the water.

The return leg stops at Martvili Canyon and then puts you back in Tbilisi for the remaining four nights, from where Mtskheta and Gori, the Kakheti wine towns and the Military Highway to Gergeti Trinity all run as day trips. Two of the eight days are largely spent in the car, which is the honest cost of getting to the coast and back.

What you go for

Two nights in Batumi, with the botanical garden, the boulevard and the Ali and Nino sculpture
Prometheus Cave and Martvili Canyon on the drives west and east
Gergeti Trinity Church, with the four-wheel drive up and down included
Mtskheta, Gori and the Kakheti wine towns of Bodbe and Sighnaghi

The route

Day by day

Times are the operator's planned schedule. They shift with the season, the light and the traffic on the day.

Day 1
Arrival, and the Tbilisi old town
Arrive at Tbilisi
Met at Tbilisi International Airport and transferred to your hotel to check in.
Tbilisi old city tour
The old town sits on both banks of the Mtkvari, and this is the walk through it: the Metekhi church and the plateau it stands on, the Narikala fortress above from the fourth century, the brick-domed sulphur bathhouses of Abanotubani and the Leghvtakhevi gorge behind them, and the botanical garden that was once part of the royal one. Then Sioni Cathedral, the mosque and the synagogue, Sharden street, Erekle II street and the Iron and Cotton streets, the Bridge of Peace, and Anchiskhati, the oldest church in the city, from the sixth century. The quarter ends at the old walls, beside the Rezo Gabriadze marionette theatre.
Tbilisi cable car
The line up to Narikala. Entry included.
Evening
Overnight in Tbilisi.
Day 2
West to the Black Sea
Overnight: Batumi
Morning
Breakfast at the hotel, then check out.
Tbilisi to Batumi
The crossing takes most of the day and covers the full width of the country, out of the dry plains around the capital and into the wet, subtropical west.
Prometheus Cave
The break on the way, at Kumistavi in the Tskaltubo municipality, 42km from Martvili. The cave runs 1.8km and drops to 40 metres below sea level. You can walk it, or take the boat along the underground Kumi river. Entry included.
Evening
Overnight in Batumi.
Day 3
Batumi
Overnight: Batumi
Morning
Breakfast at the hotel.
Batumi Botanical Garden
108 hectares on the coast north of the city, one of the largest botanical gardens anywhere in the former Soviet Union, and planted with a great deal that has no business growing at this latitude. The views run straight down onto the sea. Entry included.
Batumi Boulevard
Begun in 1881 by a German gardener and now around seven kilometres long, divided into the old boulevard and the new. It is where the city walks in the evening.
Ali and Nino
Nine metres of moving steel by Tamara Kvesitadze. The two figures approach, pass through each other and separate again on a cycle. They are the lovers in Kurban Said's novel — a Muslim boy and a Christian girl — and the sculpture is read locally as the meeting of the Islamic east and the Christian west.
Piazza Batumi
An Italian-style open square with cafés, hotels and shops built around it.
Batumi cable car
The line up over the town for the view back along the coast. Entry included.
Evening
Overnight in Batumi.
Day 4
Martvili Canyon, and back east
Morning
Breakfast at the hotel, then check out.
Martvili Canyon
A nature reserve in the west of the country, and the one landscape most people come west for: a narrow limestone gorge with walkways hung above the water. Entry included.
Back to Tbilisi
The long return leg east, arriving in the capital in the evening.
Evening
Overnight in Tbilisi.
Day 5
Mtskheta and Gori
Morning
Breakfast at the hotel.
Jvari Monastery
On a hill nine kilometres above Mtskheta, looking down on the old capital and the point where the Aragvi runs into the Mtkvari. Built in the fifth and sixth centuries, it is the first cross-domed church in Georgia and is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
Svetitskhoveli Cathedral
In Mtskheta, 24km from Tbilisi, and one of the most sacred sites in the country. The first wooden church in Georgia went up here in 337, immediately after Christianity became the state religion; the cathedral standing on the spot now was built in the eleventh century and remained the largest church in the country until the twenty-first. Also UNESCO-listed.
Stalin Museum, Gori
The only museum dedicated to him that was built in his lifetime, in the town he was born in. It holds material from his political career and from his private life. Entry included.
Evening
Overnight in Tbilisi.
Day 6
Kakheti: Bodbe and Sighnaghi
Morning
Breakfast at the hotel.
Bodbe Monastery
Just outside Sighnaghi, and one of the main pilgrimage sites in the country: the relics of St Nino, the fourth-century woman who converted the Georgians, are kept here. The terrace looks out over the Alazani valley to the Caucasus.
Sighnaghi
A small hill town above the Alazani valley in Kakheti, walled in the eighteenth century with twenty-eight towers. It is small enough to walk in an afternoon, the views from the wall are the point, and its marriage registry opens twenty-four hours a day — which is where the town's reputation as the city of love comes from.
Evening
Overnight in Tbilisi.
Day 7
The Military Highway to Kazbegi
Morning
Breakfast at the hotel.
Full day
Zhinvali Reservoir and Ananuri
The road north follows the Aragvi to the Zhinvali reservoir — 11.5 square kilometres, 75 metres at its deepest, and the source of drinking water for around half of Tbilisi. Ananuri fortress stands on its bank, seat of the dukes of Aragvi in the thirteenth century though the walls themselves are seventeenth. Two churches stand inside; the larger, the Church of the Mother of God, was finished in 1689.
Panorama Gudauri
A round stone-and-concrete structure on the Georgian Military Highway near the Gudauri ski resort, overlooking the Devil's Valley. It went up in 1983 to mark friendship between Soviet Georgia and Soviet Russia, and the inside is one long tiled mural running through scenes from both histories.
Gergeti Trinity Church
The last climb is by four-wheel drive, included both ways. The church stands alone on the hill above Stepantsminda with Mount Kazbek behind it, and it is the picture most people have in their heads before they arrive.
Evening
Back down the highway. Overnight in Tbilisi.
Day 8
Departure
Morning
Breakfast at the hotel and check out.
Transfer to Tbilisi International Airport for your flight home or onward.

Where you stay

Hotel options

Pick a line and the whole trip is costed against it, so you can see what the difference actually buys.

As quoted
- Holiday Inn Express
AED 5,234per person

Per person, twin share. Land only — international flights are not included. Rates move with the season, the number of you travelling and the hotel line you choose, so we confirm the final figure against your dates before anything is booked.

The detail

What is included

Included

Airport transfers on arrival and departure.
Air-conditioned minivan throughout.
English-speaking driver-guide throughout.
Seven nights on bed and breakfast, in a double room.
Tbilisi cable car.
Entry to the Stalin Museum, Batumi Botanical Garden, the Batumi cable car, Martvili Canyon and Prometheus Cave.
Four-wheel drive up to and down from Gergeti Trinity Church.
Two bottles of water per person, per day.

Not included

Flights.
Lunches and dinners.
Visa fees.
Travel insurance.
Taxes.
Tips and gratuities.
Bank charges.
Porterage.
Expenses of a personal nature.
Anything not listed under inclusions above.

Meal upgrades

Lunch and dinner: Not in the package. Every Georgia trip here is quoted on bed and breakfast, with lunches and dinners left out. Tell us what you want built in and we will price it against your dates and party size.

Entry rules, tourism taxes and health requirements change without notice and depend on your passport. Everything above is confirmed by our operations desk before your booking is finalised.

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