Highlights of Georgia

Your driver collects you from the airport. The afternoon walk starts at Metekhi Church beside the statue of King Vakhtang Gorgasali, the 5th-century ruler who made Tbilisi his capital. Swing up to Narikala Fortress by cable car, then wander back down past the domes of Abanotubani, where people from the city still rent private sulphur bath rooms by the hour. Carry on through the narrow streets of the old Kala quarter to Sioni Cathedral and Anchiskhati Basilica. In the evening comes a welcome dinner, and your guide explains the order of the toasts and the job of the tamada, the toastmaster who leads a Georgian supra.

A 30-minute drive brings you to Mtskheta, once the capital of the ancient kingdom of Kartli. Here you see three sites: Jvari Monastery high on its hill, Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in the middle of town, and Samtavro, the convent associated with St Nino. The road then follows the Aragvi upstream to Ananuri, a 17th-century stronghold enclosing two churches on the bank of the Zhinvali Reservoir. Beyond Gudauri you pause at the Friendship Monument, then cross the Jvari Pass, 2,379 m high, and descend into the valley of the Tergi. From Stepantsminda a 4x4 carries you up to Gergeti Trinity Church, 2,170 m up, for the classic view of Mount Kazbek.

After breakfast it is a 15-minute drive north into the Dariali Gorge, a tight granite canyon running up to the Russian border. An easy path, roughly half an hour in each direction, leads up to the Gveleti Waterfall, and near the border checkpoint the modern Dariali Monastery sits beside the river. Then you head south again over the Jvari Pass to Tbilisi. Late in the afternoon you visit Holy Trinity Cathedral, known as Sameba, consecrated in 2004 and among the tallest Orthodox cathedrals anywhere, before a stroll down Rustaveli Avenue, where the Opera House and the former Parliament building line the way. Your evening is free.

The drive east takes you into Kakheti, where most of Georgia's wine is made. Bodbe Monastery stands among tall cypresses above the Alazani Valley and keeps the tomb of St Nino. Close by, Sighnaghi is a little hilltop town wrapped in 18th-century walls studded with over twenty towers; you walk part of the ramparts and wander its cobbled central square. Lunch is in a family cellar where the wine still ferments in qvevri set into the earth, and you taste three of their wines: Rkatsiteli, Kisi and Saperavi. Heading back, you stop at the Tsinandali estate to see its 19th-century gardens.

An hour's drive west takes you to Gori. Its Stalin Museum opened in 1957 and shelters, under a marble pavilion, the house where the dictator spent his childhood, along with the green armoured railway carriage he travelled in. Ten kilometres to the east lies Uplistsikhe, carved out of the sandstone over the Mtkvari and in use from the 1st millennium BC until the Mongols came in the 13th century. Explore its halls and wine presses, and the chambers guides call the theatre and the pharmacy, then climb to the brick basilica on top. You are back in Tbilisi by mid-afternoon for your flight.