While there are no direct flights from Geneva to Tbilisi, the flights on Lufthansa via Munich were easy and affordable although admittedly still pricey at CHF500 return for an extended city break. We left on Thursday afternoon, having just enough time to go to the lounge for the customary drink to start the holiday and then waited for our delayed flight. We then had a few hours in Munich where we went and ordered found a bar/restaurant to have some dinner. When we were being seated, they said that it would take up to 45 minutes to get our food. This was no problem for us as we had a few hours, so we sat down, chose and ordered our meal with drinks and got some cards out to play some shithead. We then had a great idea: if the meal would take 45 minutes could we just order a side of chips to eat while we wait for the main burger meal. This was something they could do so we ordered a pound of chips as a starter and enjoyed our drinks and games of cards. Problem was that the food did not take 45 minutes to arrive and no sooner had we finished the mountain of chips, our main meal with more chips arrived. Needless to say, we were all very full at the end of the meal. From here we had another non-eventful flight to Tbilisi (I slept the whole way and I think Vanessa chatted to some random Georgian in the seat next to us to get some ideas for our weekend) and we arrived at about 5am and got a taxi to the hotel where we would meet Tim.
We went to check into the hotel (Shota Hotel http://www.shotahotels.com) and of course we were there too early as check in was 2pm. We could check in earlier for an additional half-night fee but they also did not have our rooms available so we could be upgraded as well (at a fee). We opted to leave our bags at reception and, being the nice friends we are, instead we call Tim and wake him up at barely 6am and hang out in his room until breakfast was being served at the hotel.
The breakfast at the hotel was pretty decent. Alfie ordered the whole hot menu it seemed, I had a huge plate of meats and cheese and pastries and a muffin. Vanessa pretended to be healthy with some fruits and cold meats and the bar staff messed up the coffee order and so we ended up with about 5 coffees when only 2 were ordered.
We then left the hotel to go for a walk around the city before it both got too hot and before we all got too tired from only sleeping on the plane. There is a really interesting mix of old buildings in a kind of European style and huge Soviet style architecture. On this walk we passed a little store where a friendly old lady was selling loads of fruits and something that was obviously food but looked more like anal beads - churchkhela. We would later find out at our wine tasting that it is nuts that are soaked in a thick fruit syrup (grape must). We went past the main square, through the old town and down to the river to get the cable car up to the top of the mountain. While we were waiting to get into the cable car, one of the many stray dogs of Tbilisi came up to the cable car station and also decided he was going to go up the cable car to the top of the mountain as well. So we shared our cable car with a couple of random people and a stray dog.
From the top of the mountain, we got a decent view of the city. We saw a sign that pointed in the direction of Turtle Lake but there was no distance on the sign. We went in that direction a little way and then decided it was too hot and we could not be bothered. We headed back to look at the fort. At the top it is cool and imposing but we could not see how to get into the fort and there were a lot of steps to go down to maybe not find a door. We all decided to get the cable car back down and it was on the way down we saw the entrance to get into the fort.
After getting back to the bottom we walked along the river for a little way and headed up to Fabrika, which is trendy complex of converted buildings into studios and bars – and a fantastic hostel. We had some really refreshing lemonade and other drinks and relaxed a bit so as not to walk too much in the sun and then we headed off again in search of lunch.
By this time, we all were a bit tired of walking in the heat and so we got on the metro to cross back to the other side of town and then walked a little further up to the old Wine Factory. We thought there was some sort of museum there as well, but it appeared to have been converted into a complex of pleasant food and drinking places, which suited us just fine. We settled in and ordered some wines, the first semi-sweet red of the weekend was ordered and approved of by all. The food was local (a garlic cream chicken; cauliflower steak; and pork and potatoes sauteed-style) and we enjoyed a couple of glasses of the semi-sweet red: highly recommended Saperavi (Ambori) Red Semi-Sweet, Babaneuri 2020.
After lunch we headed back to the hotel for naps and massages and to escape the sun.
We then headed back out to dinner. Vanessa and Tim had chosen some place doing traditional Georgian cuisine under the theatre called Salobie Bia. It was an interesting location with some questionable art. We ordered more semi sweet red wine and dinner of Khachapuri (cheesy bread), really good meats (more pork and potatoes and beef stew with oatmeal porridge), lobio (Georgian bean stew served with pickled vegetables). We finished the meal with the local chacha (a byproduct of wine production that is meant to be a digestif). As you can see from Vanessa and Tim’s face, it was delicious. Actually, Alfie and I both thought it was non offensive and that it did a great job of settling (read: burning) the stomach after the meal.
Back to the hotel where we ordered some drinks (mostly fantastic mojitos) and settled in for a night of playing shitter while there was live music playing right behind our table. It was a fun night made even better by Vanessa spending so long as shitter.
Next day the other two went for breakfast and we all agreed we would have a lazy morning before meeting at a wine tasting place for lunch. Vanessa took this as an opportunity to go shopping at the Dry Bridge Flea Market without us cramping her style and most importantly without me saying she didn’t need to buy the stuff she wanted because she already had bags, or shoes, or earrings like it already.
Tim and I decided to go and explore the local area a little bit and found a nice bar called Santino to have a coffee and ice-cream at (even though it was just after breakfast it was already hot, and an ice cream went down very well). Then we saw an all-day breakfast and champagne bar called “Brut and Breakfast bar), so we thought we should really have a second breakfast, well, just the locally made sparkling wine in the style of champagne. While sitting here enjoying our liquid breakfast we saw a newly wedded couple who were getting their wedding photos taken and in the middle of their photo shoot, a drunk guy came up to them and just started photo bombing them. Eventually he left and they were able to smile about it. It was hard for us to keep a straight face about the whole thing happening.
We then moved from our place in the sun with champagne to the wine tasting venue Vanessa had found – 8000 Vintages http://www.8000vintages.ge . It was reasonably priced, and we got 4 really nice wines to taste, some food boards and the sommelier to tell us all about the wines and the processes in Georgia. Really worth the experience and at the end of the tasting they actually left us two of the bottles from the wines we were tasting. So, a number of very nice wines in us as we headed off to find more food.
The sommelier had suggested we have Adjarian Khachapuri at the Café Stamba, which is located in this cool old hotel that also has an interesting bookshop in the lobby. Here we consumed yet more wine, the dish we had come to eat, and then followed this up with more sitting in the sun, drinking a little more wine and smoking some cigars. Vanessa left us to it so she could shop a little more (another recommendation of hers being the Bazari Orbeliani) and we migrated back to the champagne bar as well as Alfie did not have the pleasure of those drinks earlier.
Next, we wandered back up to the dumpling house Vanessa had picked out for dinner – Klike's Khinkali. It was close to our hotel and on the way, we saw some street art and some houses that didn’t look like they should still be inhabited, however, there were people going into them still. We then got to the restaurant and Vanessa took us in the wrong door. It was a dilapidated building that reminded us of this really dodgy building in Moscow that we found ourselves in while looking for a hostel. Again, this building hosted a hostel, but it looked like it might have been straight out of a horror movie. When we finally decided we were in the wrong place we went back to street level and found the correct door. Vanessa and Alfie both took turns trying to pull the door off the hinges thinking it might be shut until the woman laughing on the other side of the street told us it was a push door. How simple was that?!
We settled in for our meal. Of course, more local wine, and this time an order of 25 mixed dumplings. They were all pretty good, the meat ones and the spicy mushroom being the best. We enjoyed our meal and rolled our way back home to have another night of shitter and mojitos. Note the whole bill for 4 of us – a mountain of dumplings, a side of brown bread, some cokes and local beers – was a grand total of barely USD 25!
Alfie left before we got up this day and Tim had to work so Vanessa and I headed out to explore the brutalist and soviet architecture of the city. She had a map she got from Lonely Planet / Blue Crow Media (New map charts Tbilisi’s stunning 20th-century architecture - Lonely Planet) listing the places and so we made a walking tour. The highlights were the technical library and the skybridge and the circus building. The Skybridge is part of a large social high-rise complex and acts as a public walkway to connect the three buildings with the main road that goes up steep hill behind it. The building is clearly aged and so is the sky bridge, but you put your 20 cents in the box in the lift and it goes to the top and then you get some decent views of the city from there. It is much safer than it looks. While on this walking tour our map suggested going to the Chess Palace, while we were not so impressed with the building it was cool that there was an international chess tournament taking place while we were there. We also got ourselves lost in the underground market at Station Square at the main train station. The market is underground and has lots of narrow alleys lined with sellers and it was hard to orientate yourself in there. Vanessa wanted to buy so much and I was glad I was there to stop her ????.
Something that was not on the map that we found totally by accident while walking around was this old swimming complex that has been abandoned. Unfortunately, we didn’t fully explore this site as it is in a busy area and there are signs that say no entry and no photos, but it was too good not to sneak a little into and get at least a couple of photos. The colourful mosaic on the front of the old Laguna Vere was a real treat.
After this tour we headed back towards the old town as Vanessa felt we had not explored enough of it yet. On the way we stopped in at the Georgian National Museum that had a good exhibition of Georgia under Soviet Occupation (this gave us a clear indication as to why Georgia seemed so pro Ukrainian with pro Ukrainian street art everywhere, posters and clearly a lot of Ukrainians living and working there). There was also an expo on the history of goldsmithing that has been in the region for long long time, as well as other national archaeological treasures. There were lots of old old buildings that were in varying states of repair. It was a nice walk through this area, and we went up onto the terraced hillside under the Mother of Georgia statue where we got another good view of the city. On the way back we grabbed a dessert and headed back to find Tim.
By now we had eaten enough Georgian food and instead we headed out to get some BBQ at Ribs and Puri. It was a good meal and we sat outside enjoying the meal, chatting and drinking more wine. Then we migrated back to the hotel. On our way back, Vanessa noticed a market and really wanted to go explore so Tim and I went back and waited for Vanessa on the terrace with some drinks. That night we played Shithead instead of shitter. Like all the other nights we were there until they closed the bar and stopped serving and then we said our goodbyes to Tim as our flight was stupid early (2:30am depart from the hotel).
The food was great, the wine was even better. The temperature was perfect for doing little and drinking outside. The stray dogs are super friendly and chill (and numerous). The metro is loud, like a time warp and the escalators move really fast. The buildings are enchanting, full of character and have a wistful dereliction to them that makes them all the more charming. There is so much to see in Tbilisi – we'll be back there again for sure. Oh, and we came home with four semi-sweet reds to remind us of the trip ????