Classic Georgia

At Tbilisi airport your driver is waiting, and the first stop is your hotel in the old centre. As the evening begins, your guide sets off with you through Kala and Sololaki, quarters famous for their carved wooden balconies, crosses the glass span of the Bridge of Peace and passes the sulphur bathhouses of Abanotubani with their brick cupolas. Dinner is beside the river and gives you a first taste of the food you will eat all week: khinkali, aubergine rolls filled with walnut paste, pkhali and mtsvadi hot off the grill. While you eat, your guide explains the plan for the days ahead.

The day begins at Metekhi Church on its clifftop. Next, a cable car carries you over the rooftops to Narikala Fortress, with the Mtkvari valley below and the Mother of Georgia statue standing guard on the ridge. Descending on foot, you come to the Leghvtakhevi waterfall, then walk among the old houses to Sioni Cathedral, then on to Anchiskhati, a basilica dating from the 6th century. After lunch, the Georgian National Museum opens its treasury, where gold jewellery from ancient Colchis and Iberia is on display. Later you can hunt for Soviet badges, enamelware and old cameras among the stalls of the Dry Bridge Market. In the evening, choose between a soak in the sulphur baths and a glass in one of the city's wine bars.

Mtskheta, half an hour from Tbilisi, served as the old capital, and the Georgian kingdom took up Christianity here during the 4th century. You see three places: Jvari Monastery high above the meeting of the rivers, Svetitskhoveli Cathedral, and the convent of Samtavro. Beyond Mtskheta the highway follows the Aragvi to Ananuri, the 17th-century stronghold of the dukes of Aragvi, whose church is covered in elaborate stone carving, and then snakes upward past Gudauri and the Friendship Monument to the 2,379 m saddle of the Jvari Pass. Coming down the far side into the Tergi valley, you reach Stepantsminda, at roughly 1,750 m, with enough daylight left for a short stroll before dinner.

The old footpath from Stepantsminda to Gergeti Trinity Church climbs for about an hour and a half, first through birch woods, then across open pasture, to the 14th-century church at 2,170 m; a 4x4 can do the climb for you if you prefer. Stand on the terrace and Mount Kazbek (5,054 m) rises straight up behind the church. After lunch the car takes you to Juta, a hamlet some 2,150 m up under the jagged Chaukhi massif, where an easy path follows the stream through the meadows. Dinner is back at your hotel in Stepantsminda.

An early departure takes you out of the mountains, south and then west along the Mtkvari, to Gori, home of the Stalin Museum. Opened in 1957, it keeps the house where he was born plus the armoured railway carriage that carried him, and your guide adds the parts of the story the exhibits skip. Uplistsikhe is a short drive away. People used this rock-cut town from as early as the 1st millennium BC up to the 13th century, and you can still walk through its halls and wine presses and up its paved main street to a brick basilica. By late afternoon you are on the road back to Tbilisi.

Heading east, you stop first at Bodbe Monastery, where St Nino rests among cypress trees above the Alazani Valley. Once you have checked in at your Sighnaghi hotel, walk the town walls that King Erekle II built during the 1760s, with the Greater Caucasus on the far horizon. For lunch you drive to a village close by, where a family who make their own wine are waiting. They lead you to the clay qvevri buried in the cellar floor, describe how the grapes ferment together with skins and stems, and fill your glass with Rkatsiteli, Kisi and Saperavi. Your evening in Sighnaghi is free.

Follow the Alazani Valley to Tsinandali, the estate of Alexander Chavchavadze, a 19th-century poet and general. His cellar keeps a collection of old bottles, and the English-style park deserves an hour of your time. In Telavi you see Batonis Tsikhe, the fortified palace of King Erekle II, and a giant plane tree in the old town that is thought to be about 900 years old. A farewell lunch with local wine follows, and then you drive back to Tbilisi to catch your flight.