A taste of Tbilisi

Since researching Georgia, I had found Emily Lush's amazing "Wanderlush" blog and although I also referred to the Bradt Guidebook to Georgia, the blog was my main source of information and I had planned our whole trip using two-week Wanderlush itinerary. This was a little different to my trip to Georgia in December 2012 (13 years ago!) when I'd travelled to Tbilisi, Uplitsikhe, Gori, Bojormi, Vardzia, Batumi, Mestia and back to Tbilisi.

Having now arrived in the capital city of Tbililsi, due to the 3 hour time difference between the UK and Georgia (Georgia is ahead) it meant that we did sleep quite late so when we woke up on Sunday 3rd August, waking around 9am. Had we not got the SIM card in the airport, my plan was to buy the Magti SIM card at 22 Rustaveli Avenue (open 09:00 - 18:00 on Sundays), just a short walk away, but in the end we didn't need to bother as we'd already got it all sorted out in the airport!

So my main focus was doing a shopping trip to get food, drink and some extra toiletries. The temperatures were pretty high (around 35 degrees Celsius) and I decided we'd walk to the Carrefour supermarket nearby, and back to the apartment with a heavy shopping bag. This was a bit of a trek to be honest and not something I'd recommend in hindsight. The supermarket itself had everything you could possibly want, including toys, baby stuff and toiletries. The only minor thing was that you do have to queue for a manned checkout and there was a bit of a wait but when we got to the front, it was easy to pay using my credit card on Apple Pay.

Tbilisi also has a good Metro system (see image below) but with a child in tow, and with taxi prices being very cheap, I'd simply recommend taking a Bolt taxi (app-based, and similar to Uber) everywhere.

As we were then running a bit late after the supermarket run, we took the 3km (11 minute) ride to our cookery class and this was 5.5 GEL which is just £1.52 - what a bargain! From this point onwards, I simply took Bolts absolutely everywhere.

Our cooking class was at Restaurant Kitsch and was supposed to start at 13:00 but we were about 20 minutes late so they started without us, but this was no problem, we caught up! The class was booked on GetYourGuide and was £36 for both of us. We were sat on a large restaurant table with another eight people, two Koreans, and a group from Germany, Switzerland and India. They were all super nice and we really enjoyed the whole experience. I had a glass of wine and we had a great time learning how to make khinkhali (dumplings) and khachapuri (cheesy bread), the latter which Tiger did for me in a heart shape!

After all the cooking we got to eat the food we had made and we discovered that Tiger was a big fan of the dumplings - not so much the insides but definitely the outside! Although we were expecting the experience to finish at half past three but we didn't end up leaving until after 4pm and (having learned my lesson from walking about in the heat!) took a Bolt taxi to the Bridge of Peace (2km, 6.6 GEL, £1.80), our next destination.

We walked over a simply stunning bridge, through Rike Park to take the Mother of Georgia cable car (2.5 GEL, 70p a ticket!). This was quite something and our first of several cable cars in Georgia. At the top, we had ice creams, cold water, I bought Tiger a flower garland headdress (20 GEL, £5) and walked up to the very impressive Mother of Georgia statue where we listened to a great busker. We also looked at (from afar) the zipline called Zipin Tbilisi. I had read about and watched YouTube videos of this as you can go on the zipline down to the botanical gardens - but the videos especially had scared the living daylights out of me. If you're interested in trying this, it currently costs 100 GEL (£27), you can take kids, and is open 11:00 to 19:30 but there was no way in a million years I'd have been brave enough to try it!

Back down again, we had a mini picknick with some fruit from the fruit sellers before walking back across the Bridge of Peace and to Gulo's Thermal Spa. The walk wasn't far (15-20 minutes) and there were some cool restaurants spraying mist we could enjoy as we walked past!

The spa experience was special and funny in equal measure. I had contacted them and booked via their Facebook page a week before. We took the cheapest private room (150 GEL, £41) for one hour. In other spas, you can go to shared rooms but here you need to have a private room with a child. I'd also booked a "kisa scrub" for me for 20 GEL (£5.50) and towels were 5 GEL (£1.40) each to hire. Basically what we had was one changing area, a sitting room upstairs, a bathroom and a very big spa/bathroom. For the kisa scrub, we had a lady (called a 'Mekise') who showed us into our room and told us to get changed. We weren't (at least initially) brave enough to go nude so we both put our swimsuits on. We had a little look around and found showers, one cold bath and the giant very hot bath. I could not believe initially that Tiger would go into either as the temperatures were so stark.

After five minutes, the lady came back and took us into the spa room and got me to take my swimsuit down so I had a bare chest. Children are not allowed the scrub and the Mekise lady told Tiger to sit down and watch. She later told me she had been exploring the hot and cold baths. Well, this was quite fun. I've had a Turkish Bath before and it was similar but less vigorous. Tiger thought it was hilarious when she chucked a load of freezing cold water over me and then boiling water as I screamed!

Then, before we knew it, the Mekise lady was done and we had perhaps 40 minutes to enjoy the rest of our hour on our own. We egged each other on to go into the hot and cold water and to my great surprise we both made it into both and went in the hot and cold alternately. It was awesome, really refreshing and I did go naked right at the end! You're given a little knock to tell you "ten minutes to go" so you have time to get changed again. We paid at the end in a mixture of cash and credit card - they seemed to want some cash which I thought was to pay the Mekise lady but was just a part of the breakdown of the whole cost.

After the spa, Tiger was pretty tired, as was I. We walked back to our apartment, around a 10 minute walk, and pretty much headed straight to bed using the ebooks on Tiger's iPad (via the Borrowbox app) for bedtime stories. I was both reading aloud the Witches by Roald Dahl and Tiger was listening to The Worst Witch so a magical end to a magical day!