The Honeymoon: Tbilisi, Kazbegi or Kakheti

This is the route we redraw most often for honeymoons, and the first thing we redraw is the map. Tbilisi opens the week; the question is which single direction follows it — north to Kazbegi and the high Caucasus, or east to Kakheti and the wine country. The two sit in opposite directions from the capital, and in seven nights crossing between them stops being a honeymoon. So we choose one, go slowly, and keep the unplanned hours that make the week feel like yours rather than ours. The Tbilisi nights below stay either way; then come both shapes, and when we plan your trip you pick a direction and every day gets rebuilt around the two of you.

Day 1 — Arrival, and the old town at dusk

Your flight lands, our driver is at the barrier with your name, and the first thing you learn about Georgia is that nobody here hurries an evening. We settle you into your stay in old Tbilisi — the exact house is one of the details Nia confirms with you — and if you have the energy we walk you out for a first supper: khinkali ordered by the dozen, a carafe of house saperavi, and the warm mineral smell of the bath quarter drifting up the lane.

Day 2 — Balconies, Narikala and an hour of steam

Tbilisi at walking pace. Carved wooden balconies leaning over courtyards, the crooked clock tower by the puppet theatre, coffee wherever a chair catches the morning sun. In the afternoon the cable car lifts you over the river to Narikala fortress, and from the wall the whole city arranges itself below you. Late in the day we have a private room held at the sulphur baths in Abanotubani — an hour of heat and, if you are brave, a scrub you will talk about for years — before a slow supper in a courtyard nearby.

The mountain shape — north to Kazbegi

Choose the mountains, and from day three the week faces north and stays there.

Day 3 — Up the Georgian Military Road

The road north is the point, not the obstacle. Ananuri fortress stands over its green reservoir about an hour out of the city; lunch is khinkali in Pasanauri, the village that invented them; and then the road climbs past Gudauri to the Jvari pass at almost 2,400 metres. By late afternoon you are in Stepantsminda with Mount Kazbek filling the window, and the evening asks nothing of you at all.

Day 4 — Gergeti Trinity at first light

We time Gergeti Trinity Church for the quiet hour after dawn, before the day trippers arrive — the church small and certain on its hill, Kazbek behind it catching the first sun. The rest of the day belongs to the valley below and a long lunch you never check the time through.

Day 5 — The Juta valley

A gentle walk under the towers of the Chaukhi massif, a picnic by the river, and the kind of silence cities forget to mention. Juta is one of the highest villages in the country and asks nothing of your fitness — we set the pace, and turning back early for coffee is a legitimate plan.

Day 6 — A day with no list

The morning is yours: a second, slower look at the valley, a horse ride arranged with a local stable, or the window seat and a book with Kazbek doing all the work. Suppers up here are early, warm and close to your bed, which by day six is exactly what you want.

Day 7 — South again, with a pause at Mtskheta

Down the Military Road with one last look back at the mountain, then a pause at Mtskheta — the old capital, where two rivers meet below the Jvari church — before one final supper in old Tbilisi, at the table we save for last nights.

Day 8 — Home

The airport at whatever hour your flight insists on, and Nia on WhatsApp until you are through the gate — the same number that has answered all week.

The wine shape — east to Kakheti

Choose the vines instead, and day three turns east over the wooded Gombori pass into the Alazani valley, with the Caucasus lined up along the far horizon like a held breath. The middle of the week settles in Sighnaghi, the walled hill town where the evening walk is along the ramparts and the last light lands on snow eighty kilometres away.

Georgians have made wine in buried clay Qvevri for around eight thousand years, and these days are for tasting why that matters: a morning at Pheasant’s Tears in Sighnaghi — the tasting our guests write to us about afterwards — then a small family marani where the winemaker pours, supper happens at the family’s table, and the toasts do not end until the tamada decides they have. In between there is the cypress-lined path at Bodbe monastery above the valley, a village lunch under a walnut tree, and at least one afternoon with nothing planned at all, because that is the afternoon you will talk about.

On the last full day we drive you back over the pass for a final supper in old Tbilisi, and day eight is the same unhurried goodbye as the mountain shape — bottles wrapped properly in your luggage this time.