I got up early. Not reluctantly — eagerly. This was the day I’d been circling since before I arrived in Georgia. A 6 GEL Bolt ride dropped me at Europa Square — which, in a piece of urban planning gently appropriate for a country that likes to keep you guessing, is a circle. I arrived before 8:30, deliberately early, to sit in the park near the gondola station. My tour would leave at 9. The quiet was mine until then.

The park bench was positioned perfectly — sun warming my back, the city still rubbing sleep from its eyes. For a while, nothing moved except the light. Then the world began to assemble itself around me. A few old guys appeared and started setting up the line barricades for the gondola queue — the kind of ritualized labor performed without hurry or conversation, just the quiet competence of men who have done this a thousand mornings in a row.

An old woman pushed a trolley right next to my bench. I must have picked the optimum spot — the prime real estate for a berry vendor. She set up her cart with the same unhurried precision: raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, arranged in neat mounds.

Between arranging her wares, she reached into a bag and pulled out loaves of bread, tearing off pieces and tossing them to the birds. The pigeons knew her. They’d been waiting.

Tbilisi was waking up slowly. It was 8:29 AM and the only souls around were early tourists blinking in the morning light and the workers settling in for what would be a very long day.

Then came an image that hasn’t left me. A very old man showed up with a broom and a trash can, sweeping the plaza with movements that had been old for decades. On my last tour, a guide had told me something I can’t unhear: the pension in Georgia is only enough to buy three to five days worth of food. Many elderly Georgians work until disability or death — not out of restlessness or vocational devotion, but because the math of survival leaves no other choice. The man with the broom would be here long after I’d board my tour bus, long after I’d returned to my apartment, long after I’d flown home. Some tourism experiences come with a viewfinder; some come with a window you can’t close.

👁 Vista — The Chronicles of Georgia

Our guide Ika and driver Raul collected us at 9. On the drive, Ika shared the first lesson: Sakartvelo is what Georgians call their country. Not “Georgia” — that’s the name outsiders gave it. The word the people use for their own land. A small thing, but these are the details that matter.

Then we rounded a hill and the Chronicles of Georgia monument appeared — and everything else disappeared. This is not an exaggeration. The structure leaves you speechless the first time you see it. I’ve visited cathedrals, fortresses, UNESCO sites across a dozen countries, and nothing prepared me for this.

From a distance, the monument resembles a gigantic ruined temple — a fortress, a megalithic sanctuary, something that might have stood on this hill for millennia. Up close, the illusion dissolves and something stranger emerges: the “columns” are not classical round columns at all. They are massive, rectangular, faceted vertical blocks — stepping inward and outward in profile, with projecting and recessed surfaces that create deep shadows and provide frames for enormous bronze and copper sculptural reliefs.

The sixteen pillars form an open architectural enclosure rather than an enclosed building. Several pillars are joined high overhead by horizontal sculptural lintels or beams, producing gigantic rectangular openings reminiscent of doors or portals. The sky remains visible everywhere, effectively becoming the “ceiling” of the monument. It is, as one source aptly described it, a cloister open to the sky.

Each pillar works simultaneously as architecture, sculpture, and a page of history. The structural mass provides the vertical framework; enormous relief compositions cover much of the surface. Large vertical recesses contain standing figures several metres tall; rectangular relief panels occupy the bases; geometric frames divide scenes from one another. Because of the stepping profile and the deep shadows, sunlight changes the entire experience dramatically. Strong side lighting makes the relief figures project visually from the dark surfaces — the monument is different at 10 AM than it is at noon, and different again at sunset. I circled it twice. The first time to see it. The second time to understand what I was looking at.

On the bus, driving away, Coldplay’s “Paradise” came on the radio. An appropriate song. Because it genuinely felt like I had just been somewhere otherworldly — not another country, but another register of human ambition.

👁 Vista — Sighnaghi, City of Love

Sighnaghi is a city perched atop a mountain, and the ancient walls of this fortress city have kept intruders at bay for centuries. The views stretch across the Alazani Valley to the Caucasus Mountains beyond — the kind of panorama that makes you stop walking mid-stride, involuntarily, because your brain needs a moment to accept that what your eyes are reporting is real.

The city itself is peaceful in the way hilltowns are peaceful. A stroll through the park found us accompanied by the sound of a local musician playing guitar and singing with a deep, melancholy voice — the kind of unfiltered street performance that no concert hall can replicate because the mountain air is part of the instrument.

We had lunch here. The food was average — barbecue chicken and a Coke, 31 GEL — but the view was not. This is something I’m learning in Georgia: a mediocre meal with a spectacular view beats a great meal in a basement. The sight senses can carry the taste senses when the latter need help. Lunch wasn’t memorable as food. Lunch was memorable as an experience.

Then came the wine tasting. Six bottles lined up. Five were good. One was exceptional:

SIGHNAGHI ESTATE
SAPERAVI ROSÉ

That’s it. That’s the one. If you find yourself in Sighnaghi, remember that name. The Saperavi grape is Georgia’s signature red varietal, and in rosé form here it produces something floral, crisp, and unmistakably of this place.

After lunch, we walked along the watchtower. I mentally played Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” — because how could you not? The song followed me along the ramparts, and I let it. Later, I found an ice cream shop perched at the edge of a cliff with another incredible view of the valley below and mountains beyond. 5 GEL for a cone. I sat down, took the view in, and let the ice cream melt faster than I could eat it because the view kept distracting me.

As always, the tour has a schedule to keep, so we only get an hour or two long glimpse of the places we visit. Then it’s time to move on. This is the tour-group contract: breadth in exchange for depth. You accept it going in, but it stings a little every time you leave a place you know you could have stayed in all day.

🙏 Sanctuary — Bodbe Monastery

Bodbe Monastery is an important Georgian Orthodox monastery near Sighnaghi in the Kakheti region. It is closely associated with Saint Nino, the woman who introduced Christianity to Georgia in the 4th century and is believed to be buried there. Her tomb rests inside the main church, dedicated to Saint George. For sixteen centuries, pilgrims have made this journey.

The monastery became an important religious and pilgrimage center almost immediately after St. Nino’s death, and walking the grounds, you understand why. The site is meticulously clean — not sterile, but cared-for in the way that signals that someone loves this place. The garden is exceptional. Blooming roses and other flowers fill the mountain air with a majestic perfume that hits you before you see the blossoms. It’s the kind of fragrance that makes you breathe deeper without realizing you’re doing it.

The church is under renovation, and no photos allowed inside, but it has the standard trappings of an Orthodox church — icons, candles, the particular quality of light that filtered through stained glass onto gold leaf. What stayed with me wasn’t the interior but the feel of the grounds. The rose perfume. The silence between tour groups. The knowledge that this place had been a destination for the faithful since before my ancestors had a written language.

This place is a sanctuary for so many who pilgrim here — and sitting in the garden, surrounded by roses and mountain air, it became one for me as well. Not in a religious sense, exactly. But in the sense that matters: a place where the noise of the world falls away and what remains feels true.

Palate – Badiauri Shotis Puri

That’s shotis puri (შოთის პური), usually shortened to shoti — the classic Georgian canoe-shaped bread. This was the activity for second to last stop.

How it’s traditionally made: the baker stretches the dough into that long pointed shape and then sticks it directly onto the inside wall of the deep clay oven in front of you. That oven is called a tone (თონე), essentially Georgia’s relative of a tandoor. 

The dough is very simple—typically flour, water, and salt—but the extremely hot tone gives it a blistered/crisp exterior and a soft, chewy middle. 

The bread out of the oven was mouthwatering warm and delicious. Not bad for 2 Gel.

Our last stop was Nato & Gio which was a repeat of what I did on the David Gareji tour you can read about here. There are only so many tour vendors so repetitive stops tend to happen in Georgia.

By the Numbers

Item	GEL	EUR (≈)
Bolt to Europa Square	6.00	€2.04
Day tour (Chronicles + Sighnaghi + Bodbe)	52.39	€17.82
Lunch (barbecue chicken + Coke)	31.00	€10.54
Ice cream (cliffside)	5.00	€1.70
Shoti	2.00	€0.66
Known Total	94.39	€32.77