Day 25 began with a real estate errand. I went looking for a new development called Marqcity — except I couldn’t find it. I found a development, but with so many construction projects sprouting across Tbilisi right now, I’m not sure it was the one. In any event, there was a nearby highway with lots of road noise — the universal dealbreaker — so I moved on. The search continues.

🎨 Art Museum of Georgia

Second stop: the Art Museum of Georgia — 40 GEL. A sprawling collection spanning centuries and continents, with an unusually strong lineup of European masters alongside Georgian icons. I spent the better part of the afternoon moving from room to room, and these were the pieces that stopped me:

• Jan Steen — The Family Carousal
• Cornelius de Breyer — Still Life with Fruit, Oysters and Ham
• Henrick van Steenwijk — An Interior of a Gothic Church
• Mikhail Larionov — Sketch of a Projective Suit
• Alcide Le Beau — A Harbour in Flowers
• Evgeny Kibrik — Fertility
• Nicolas Poussin — The Abduction of Proserpine by Pluto
• Wassily Kandinsky — The Black Stroke and A Picture with a Circle / The First Non-Objective
• Niko Pirosmani — Fisherman in a Red Shirt and Kakhetian Epic
• Shalva Kikodze — In Remembrance of the Untimely Gone Friend — Self Portrait
• Elene Akhvlediani — Paris
• Lado Gudiashvili — Self Portrait

That’s a Dutch Golden Age genre scene, a couple of still lifes, a Gothic church interior, Russian avant-garde costume design, Impressionist harbour florals, Soviet-era fertility symbolism, Baroque mythological drama, two Kandinskys, and a run of Georgian masters: Pirosmani’s naive genius, Kikodze’s mournful self-portrait, Akhvlediani’s Paris, and Gudiashvili looking back at himself after yesterday’s museum dedicated to his work.

The Kandinskys were the highlight for me. “The Black Stroke” and “A Picture with a Circle / The First Non-Objective” — this is where abstract art was born, or at least where it announced itself. Standing in front of a 1910 Kandinsky in Tbilisi, Georgia, you feel the strangeness of geography. How did these end up here? The Soviet Union collected art voraciously and distributed it unpredictably. The result is that a modest museum in the Caucasus holds masterpieces most Western collections would kill for.

Pirosmani, as always, grounds the whole experience. “Fisherman in a Red Shirt” — a lone figure on a black background, rendered in his signature flat, untrained style that somehow conveys more emotion than any academic painting in the room. “Kakhetian Epic” — a feast scene, a Georgian supra on canvas, the kind of painting that makes you hungry and homesick for a place that isn’t yours.

👅 Palate — Fiesta Amigos

For dinner I returned to Fiesta Amigos — to see Luka, the owner I’d met on Day 13 when I’d promised to help him improve his menu. I was also nostalgic for some Tex-Mex food. I ordered a chicken quesadilla and a non-alcoholic piña colada — 50 GEL. The combination of flavours worked well. The quesadilla was crisp, the chicken seasoned properly, the piña colada sweet and cold. Progress, or consistency — either way, a satisfying meal.

By the Numbers

Item	GEL	EUR (≈)
Art Museum of Georgia	40.00	€13.61
Dinner (Fiesta Amigos — quesadilla + piña colada)	50.00	€17.01
Total	90.00	€30.61