Georgia 6 Day Itinerary

Most US, UK, EU and Canadian passport holders can stay in Georgia for a full year without applying for anything, which is one of the most generous visa-free arrangements anywhere. Starting January 2026, though, every visa-free tourist must arrive with health and accident insurance covering at least 30,000 GEL, and border staff have started asking for proof of it. Sort that before you fly, then build the rest of the trip around Tbilisi as a hub, because the geography of this country punishes anyone who tries to loop through it in a straight line.

Day 1: Tbilisi arrival

Land at Tbilisi International, check in, and head straight for the Old Town rather than resting first, since jet lag fades faster if you stay upright and moving. Walk up to Narikala Fortress for the view over the Kura river, then drop into one of the sulfur bathhouses in Abanotubani. These are working bathhouses, not a museum piece, so book a private room in advance at somewhere like Chreli Abano if you don’t want to share a communal pool with strangers.

In the evening, Rustaveli Avenue is the obvious stretch for dinner, but I’d cut one block off it into the surrounding streets, where prices drop and the khachapuri is usually better than what’s served to the avenue’s tourist footfall. Taxis and ride-hailing apps cover the city cheaply and the metro is a genuinely fast way to cross town at rush hour.

Day 2: Mtskheta

Mtskheta sits twenty minutes north of Tbilisi by car or marshrutka, making it an easy half-day rather than a full one. Jvari Church and Svetitskhoveli Cathedral are both UNESCO listed, and the pairing works because Jvari’s hilltop position gives you the view down over the cathedral and the confluence of the Mtkvari and Aragvi rivers below, one of the better vantage points in the country for a single photo. Come back to Tbilisi by early afternoon and use the rest of the day to catch anything missed on day one, since Mtskheta rarely fills a whole day on its own.

Day 3: Kazbegi

Kazbegi, officially called Stepantsminda, is around 150 kilometres north of Tbilisi and takes roughly three to three and a half hours by car or marshrutka along the Georgian Military Highway. Shared minivans leave from Didube station through the morning and cost about 15 GEL, though a private driver gives you the freedom to stop at the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument on the way, which is worth the five minutes even if the name feels dated now.

Gergeti Trinity Church sits on a hill above town with Mount Kazbek behind it, and a 4x4 up the access track is the standard way to reach it since the hike itself takes a couple of hours each way and the road is rough enough that walking isn’t the efficient option most guides suggest. Given the distances involved here, I’d plan on staying overnight in Kazbegi rather than treating it as a day trip from Tbilisi; the round-trip drive alone eats six to seven hours, and rushing it just to sleep back in the capital defeats the point of coming this far north.

Day 4: Back to Tbilisi, on to Batumi

There is no direct route between Kazbegi and Batumi. This is the one place a generic itinerary tends to get badly wrong, sketching a straight line across the map that doesn’t correspond to any actual road. Everything from the northern mountains has to funnel back through Tbilisi first, and Tbilisi to Batumi is itself a five to six hour drive covering roughly 370 kilometres. Realistically this makes day four a travel day: return to Tbilisi in the morning, then take the overnight train or an afternoon flight on to Batumi rather than trying to drive the whole stretch in one push. The train is comfortable, cheap, and turns a long day into dead time you can sleep through.

Day 5: Batumi

Batumi is Georgia’s Black Sea resort city and it looks almost nothing like the rest of the country, all glass towers and neon along the Boulevard, with a scattering of oddball statues including the moving Ali and Nino sculpture that slides past itself twice daily. The Botanical Garden a short drive up the coast opened officially in 1912 and holds one of the more serious subtropical plant collections in the former Soviet world; skip the superlative claims about it being the single oldest in Europe, which don’t hold up, and just enjoy it for what it actually is; a genuinely excellent, sprawling garden worth two or three unhurried hours.

Day 6: Kutaisi or back to Tbilisi

Kutaisi, Georgia’s second city, sits about two hours from Batumi and makes a sensible stop on the way back toward Tbilisi rather than a separate side trip. Gelati Monastery and Bagrati Cathedral are both UNESCO sites within a short drive of each other, and Sataplia Nature Reserve nearby has genuine dinosaur footprints preserved in exposed limestone alongside a karst cave system with a glass-floored viewing platform. If your flight home leaves from Tbilisi, this is the natural closing leg; if it leaves from Batumi or Kutaisi itself, both have their own airports and save you the backtrack entirely.

Practical notes

The Georgian lari is the currency, and cards work in cities but cash still matters in villages and on marshrutkas. Georgian and Russian are widely spoken; English is patchy outside Tbilisi and Batumi’s tourist zones. Buy a local SIM at the airport on arrival, since coverage in the mountains near Kazbegi is spotty enough that offline maps are worth downloading in advance.