Georgia is a country of day trips. They all start in Tbilisi.
Which Kakheti cellar day earns ten hours in a minibus. What the 4WD leg up to Gergeti adds to a Kazbegi ticket. Tbilisi is the base; the day out is the decision.
- 278
- tours you can book
- $9
- the cheapest day
- 41
- days out under $25
The wine road east, the mountain road north, and the old town under your feet.
What each one costs, and how much of the day it takes.
01The wine dayDay Trip to Kakheti Wine Region Including 9 Wine TastingsNine tastings across Kakheti with lunch in the middle. The cheapest way into wine that has been made the same way for eight thousand years.
02The mountain dayHighlights of Caucasus Mountains-Jinvali,Ananuri,Gudauri,Kazbegi(Group tour)Jinvali reservoir, Ananuri fortress, Gudauri, then Kazbegi. The Military Highway in one long push north and back.
03The city dayTbilisi Walking Tour Including Cable Car and Traditional BakeryOld Tbilisi on foot, the cable car up to Narikala, and a bakery where the bread comes off the wall of the oven.
North for the mountains, west for the water, forty minutes east for the old capital.
Tbilisi is small and the good days are all outside it. Three kinds of day trip, what each costs to board, and how far the minibus actually goes.
The tours that fill the minibuses out of Tbilisi.
Every tour in Georgia →Priced, timed and placed, so you can tell the ten-hour push north from the four-hour walk downtown.
1
Day Trip to Kakheti Wine Region Including 9 Wine Tastings
Review of a 10-hour Kakheti wine tour from Tbilisi with Sighnaghi, Bodbe Monastery, nine tastings, lunch, and family wineries.
From · $29
Read our review →
2
Highlights of Caucasus Mountains-Jinvali,Ananuri,Gudauri,Kazbegi(Group tour)
from $29
3
Day Trip to Kazbegi and Gudauri
from $29
4
Day Trip to Mtskheta Gori and Uplistsikhe
from $29
5
Tbilisi Walking Tour Including Cable Car and Traditional Bakery
from $19
6
Day Trip to Armenia Including Homemade Lunch
from $59
7
Kakheti Wine Region: Signagi and Bodbe Tour with 10 Wine Tastings
from $13.60
8
Mtskheta,Jvari,Bazaar,wine tasting,Chronicles of Georgia
from $20
Old Tbilisi is a hill, a sulphur quarter and a cable car.
Carved balconies hanging off the Sololaki lanes, the domed brick bathhouses down at Abanotubani, and Narikala fortress over the whole thing. Most of it is walkable. The last climb is not, which is what the cable car is for.
Georgia buried its wine in clay eight thousand years before anyone planted a vine in France.
Kakheti starts two hours east: Sighnaghi on its ridge, Bodbe in the valley below it, and cellars where the qvevri are still sunk to the neck in the floor. Most days out pour eight to ten glasses and put a long lunch in the middle.
- 1Day Trip to Kakheti Wine Region Including 9 Wine Tastingsfrom $29
- 2Kakheti Wine Region: Signagi and Bodbe Tour with 10 Wine Tastingsfrom $13.60
- 3Mtskheta,Jvari,Bazaar,wine tasting,Chronicles of Georgiafrom $20
A whole day out of Tbilisi costs less than dinner in most capitals.
Every day out, grouped by what it costs. In Georgia the harder question is usually how long the day runs, not what you pay for it.
Old-town walks, the cable car, cooking classes, and a seat on the group minibus to Kakheti or Kazbegi.
The long guided days: Kazbegi with the 4WD leg, the canyons out west, Vardzia and Borjomi.
Private drivers, small-group cellar days with lunch, and the cross-border run into Armenia.
Wine in buried clay, a city cut into a cliff, and a monument nobody warns you about.
Mountains and old towns exist everywhere. Qvevri, Vardzia and Tsereteli’s sixteen columns do not.
Qvevri wine
Georgian wine ferments in egg-shaped clay jars buried to the neck in the cellar floor. Skins, stems and pips go in with the juice and stay there through the winter, which is why the whites come out amber and taste like nothing sold as white wine anywhere else. UNESCO listed the method in 2013. The cellars had been using it for about eight thousand years by then.
- 1Day Trip to Kakheti Wine Region Including 9 Wine Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,774 reviews
- 2Kakheti Wine Region: Signagi and Bodbe Tour with 10 Wine Tastings★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,019 reviews
- 3Mtskheta,Jvari,Bazaar,wine tasting,Chronicles of Georgia★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 730 reviews
The cave city at Vardzia
Thirteen tiers of chambers cut into a cliff above the Mtkvari, dug out under Queen Tamar in the twelfth century as a fortress the Mongols never took. An earthquake later sheared the outer wall away and left the rooms open to the valley, so you walk through what was meant to be sealed rock. It is four hours from Tbilisi each way, which is why it is a long day or nothing.
- 1Day tour to Vardzia, Borjomi in Georgia★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 152 reviews
- 2BORJOMI, RABATI & VARDZIA – Group Tour from Kutaisi★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 76 reviews
- 3Vardzia, Rabati, and Borjomi Ancient Georgia Group Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 74 reviews
The Chronicles of Georgia
Zurab Tsereteli stood sixteen black columns on a hill above the Tbilisi Sea, each around thirty metres high and carved top to bottom with kings, queens and scenes from the Gospels. Work started in 1985 and has never quite finished. Almost nobody outside the city mentions it. Go at sunrise, when the sun comes across the carvings from the side.
- 1Mtskheta,Jvari,Bazaar,wine tasting,Chronicles of Georgia★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 730 reviews
- 2Jvari-Uplistsike-Chronicle of Georgia, PRIVATE Trip★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 105 reviews
- 3Day tour to Chronicles of Georgia, Gori city, Uplistsikhe cave★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 86 reviews
Four Georgian days that the weather, the border or the season decides for you.
Most of this country can be arranged the night before over a jug of house wine. These four cannot: a mountain pass, a ski season, an international border and a four-hour drive each way set their own terms.
- 01Highlights of Caucasus Mountains-Jinvali,Ananuri,Gudauri,Kazbegi(Group tour)The Jvari Pass tops out at 2,379 metres and shuts at short notice once the snow comes down. These run when the road is open, not when you are free.
- 02Gudauri Ski Resort Private Day Tour from Tbilisi Snow AdventureGudauri is a winter resort. The lifts turn roughly December to April, and the good days go inside that window rather than across the year.
- 03Day Trip to Rainbow Mountains and David GarejaThe cave chapels sit on the Azerbaijan border and the upper path is not always open. Departures follow the border, not the calendar.
- 04Day tour to Vardzia, Borjomi in GeorgiaVardzia is four hours out and four hours back. The minibus leaves early and returns late, and there is no shorter version of that day.
When the road north closes, the day moves indoors and east.
From December the Jvari Pass can shut for days at a time and the 4WD leg up to Gergeti Trinity stops running altogether. Kakheti stays open all winter, the cellars are warm, and Gudauri turns from an obstacle into the reason to be here. Book the mountain day for a clear morning and keep a cellar day in reserve.
By place — the city, and where the road goes
By kind of day — mountain, cellar, canyon or cave
Tbilisi, the old capital, the mountain road, then the wine country.
Newest first, from Tbilisi to Batumi.
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