This is the homecoming episode, which made it the hardest one to write. It is much easier to turn a place into a guide when you can keep a little distance from it. Tbilisi does not give me that luxury. It is too close to home, too full of versions of myself, too tied to people, streets, meals, balconies, arguments, late nights, and family tables to be neatly presented in thirteen spots.
There is also a strange pressure in writing about the place that feels like home. You want to get it right, but you also know that “right” is impossible. Tbilisi is not a city you can summarize cleanly. It is beautiful and chaotic, tender and difficult, generous and dramatic, often within the same afternoon. It is a city of courtyards, staircases, overheard conversations, strong opinions, long toasts, late dinners, and architecture that looks like it has survived several lives already.
So this is not a definitive guide. It could never be. It is simply my Tbilisi Thirteen: thirteen places, details, rituals, meals, views, and tiny obsessions from the city I know too well and not nearly enough.
1 / The book I’d pack for the trip: Poems by Galaktion Tabidze
Galaktion is my favorite poet, which makes recommending him in translation feel slightly unfair. I am not sure any translation can fully carry the music, melancholy, or strange emotional weather of his Georgian, but it is still the right book to bring to Tbilisi. His poems feel like the city in certain moods: romantic, wounded, impossible to fully explain, and always a little more dramatic than planned.
2 / The coffee I’d start the morning with: Shavi Coffee
Shavi is the kind of coffee stop that easily becomes part of your routine, even if you are only in town for a few days. Good coffee, good energy, and a special shout-out to the Zandukeli Street team for being some of the best people to start a morning around. Some places serve coffee. Some places make you feel like the day has been properly introduced.
3 / The neighborhood I’d get lost in: Sololaki
Sololaki is the neighborhood I would send someone to if they wanted to understand why people become sentimental about Tbilisi architecture. The buildings are theatrical, beautiful, crumbling, restored, mysterious, and occasionally all of the above at once. You walk past carved balconies, painted entryways, old staircases, hidden courtyards, and doors that make you want to invent an entire family history behind them. It is less a neighborhood than a very good argument for looking up.
4 / The walk I’d take: Betlemi Street up to Mother of Georgia
This is the kind of walk that reminds you Tbilisi was not built for people in inappropriate shoes, but rewards them anyway. Start on Betlemi Street and make your way up, slowly, stopping whenever the city opens beneath you. The climb gives you courtyards, rooftops, church bells, laundry lines, cats, balconies, and finally that wide view of Tbilisi looking exactly like itself: messy, dramatic, and impossible not to forgive.
5 / The thing I’d pack in my suitcase if I could: The supra tradition
If I could pack one thing from Georgia, it would be the supra: the designated toastmaker, the designated wine-pourer, the impossible amount of food, and the best storytelling you have ever heard disguised as dinner. A good supra is not just a meal. It is theatre, memory, argument, poetry, family history, national philosophy, and mild emotional ambush served over several hours. Unfortunately, it does not fit in a suitcase. It barely fits on a table.
6 / The afternoon pick-me-up: Mapshalia
Mapshalia is not trying to be polished, which is exactly the point. Go for a chacha shot, stay for the wall decor, which deserves its own thesis. It is chaotic, warm, deeply local, slightly surreal, and the kind of place where “just stopping in for a second” can very quickly become a whole chapter of the day.
7 / The spot for people-watching: Samba Warehouse
Samba Warehouse Amphitheatre is one of those places where Tbilisi gathers in all its contradictions. People arrive dressed for completely different nights, carrying different moods, different plans, different levels of commitment to the evening. It is excellent for watching the city perform itself: cool, chaotic, social, stylish, unserious, and somehow always exactly on brand.
8 / The view I’d keep secret: The blue building at Rustaveli Avenue No. 54
Not every view has to be panoramic. Sometimes the best view is a building you almost miss. Set slightly back from Rustaveli Avenue, the historic blue residential house built in 1897 for Vasil Gabashvili has carved wooden lace balconies and the kind of tucked-away beauty that feels very Tbilisi: visible, but not obvious. It is a reminder that the city often hides its best details in plain sight.
9 / The souvenir I’d actually buy: Traditional carpets from Dry Bridge Market
Dry Bridge Market is where I’d go looking for the kind of Georgian carpet that makes every other souvenir look unserious. Color, history, texture, and enough personality to become the main character of the room. The only problem is that buying one makes you want to redecorate your entire life around it, which is both inconvenient and understandable.
10 / The table I’d reserve for dinner: Ninia’s Garden
Ninia’s Garden feels like exactly where you want to end up for dinner in Tbilisi: warm, lively, beautiful without being stiff, and full of the kind of food that makes the table go quiet for a second before everyone starts talking again. It has that very Georgian ability to make dinner feel like both an occasion and something that could happily go on forever.
11 / The sweet treat I’d save room for: Chocolate cake at Rooms Kitchen
Some desserts are worth being very specific about. The chocolate cake at Rooms Kitchen is one of them. It is rich, confident, and exactly the kind of thing you order “for the table” while knowing perfectly well that you are emotionally prepared to defend your portion.
12 / The bar I’d end the night in: Mutant Radio
Mutant Radio is where I would end the night if I wanted the evening to keep unfolding without becoming too predictable. It feels very Tbilisi in the best way: creative, loose, strange, social, and full of people who look like they know about something happening later. Go for a drink, stay because the night has clearly developed its own opinion.
13 / The reason I’d come back: To explore the whole country
The truth is, Tbilisi is only the beginning. I would come back for the city, of course, but also because Georgia constantly reminds you that there is more waiting just beyond it: mountains, wine regions, seaside towns, villages, monasteries, roads, kitchens, and landscapes that feel almost unreasonable in their beauty. The real reason to come back is that no matter how much you see, Georgia always makes you feel like you have only just started.
That’s Tbilisi, at least for now. I know I’ve left out half the city, countless meals, and so many places that are tied to memories I could never fully explain on a page. There are streets I still walk down and suddenly feel like a different version of myself, courtyards that remind me of people I miss, and ordinary corners that have somehow become part of who I am. Maybe that is the only honest way to write about home: incompletely, emotionally, and with the knowledge that thirteen places could never hold everything Tbilisi has given me.
More guides, more detours, and more unnecessary emotional attachments to places coming soon.
See you next 13th.
