In the last article we covered a lot of ground. If you haven’t read it yet, here’s the basic breakdown of what we touched on:

We got acquainted with Georgia as a whole and went through a lot of the history and geopolitical forces that have made this place what it is today.
We did a quick introduction to the Georgian capital city of Tbilisi within this context.
Last, we got out onto the streets of Tbilisi for some preliminary exploring (which means there were TONS of cool pictures that you should go check out.)

Now that we’ve gotten through all of that, it’s time to dive a bit deeper and check out some of the sights that make Tbilisi what it is on an individual level. I’ll be the first to admit that I am often not very enthused when faced with the prospect of visiting and learning about every single old building in these kinds of cities. I mean, it feels like work sometimes, right? But I did my best in Tbilisi, and to be honest, I was WEARY by the end of it. This is a trip that really forced me to re-evaluate the way I travel because I was just so goddamn tired and sweaty by the end of it. It was upper 90s & humid every single day. Walking across Tbilisi with my camera felt like a death march at times, because we were zig-zagging up and down the side of a mountain. I left this city vowing to take more relaxation time on my next trip. Travel is definitely not the same thing as vacation, but that doesn’t mean you need to run yourself ragged.

So when I look back on Tbilisi… sometimes I just feel tired. I went to a hell of a lot of places within this city, but I’m only going to cover the ones that really stick out in my mind as being special. But before we dive in, here’s a quick overview map of Tbilisi that I made for the last article.

Blue 💙= Tbilisi Cityscape (a general representation of what would be considered urban or suburban)
Red ❤️= Kura River (this river in the centrifuge of life and city planning in Tbilisi)
Yellow 💛= Tbilisi City Center (almost everything we’ll cover today is in this area)

Holy Trinity Cathedral

a.k.a. Tsminda Sameba Cathedral

Sometimes referred to simply as “Sameba,” this massive structure is the mothership for the whole Georgian Orthodox Church. And unlike most other churches we’re going to visit in the region, it’s not very old. Construction on this thing only started in 1995, and it was officially completed & opened for business in November of 2004. I had no idea it was such a recent development until I sat down to write this article! When I was actually there, I assumed it was just very well preserved. But come to think of it, it was all VERY smooth and clean compared to other structures in the region. I should have been suspicious.

The main thing I want to highlight about this church is that it’s REALLY FUCKING BIG. Aerial shots over this part of the city look like a model city where one piece was clearly meant to be used in the next size up. It’s just on a different scale from anything else around it. Check out these pictures of the church from far away. It’s like Will Ferrell in Elf when he was still up at the north pole.

This church sits in a neighborhood called Avlabari atop Elia Hill, which isn’t exactly the nicest area. But from what I can tell, it’s still a perfectly safe walk. Georgia is quite a safe country so long as you’re not doing stupid things on one of their dotted-line borders. We walked to this church from the center of Tbilisi’s Old Town and it only took 15-ish minutes.

Once we actually arrived… the size of this place blew my hair back. The only church I’ve been in that felt bigger than this was the Vatican. I actually looked up where this ranks on the list of the biggest churches in the world, and it’s nowhere near the top of the list… but I’ve been in some churches that are supposedly bigger than this, and I call bullshit.

So I was thoroughly impressed, as were my cohorts, but apparently this church is the source of some controversy. Some people think it’s an eye-sore (but those people are wrong). And then there’s the issue that it was supposedly built on top of an old Armenian cemetery that had been mostly destroyed by the Soviets. Apparently this site was not treated with much respect during the construction process… 😬🤷🏻‍♂️I can’t comment on any of that. All I know is that it’s cool and you should definitely come here if you ever find yourself in Tbilisi.

the Bridge of peace

When I was actually in Tbilisi, I heard people call this “Peace Bridge,” but apparently the formal name is “The Bridge of Peace.” If you hadn’t already guessed from the modern architecture, this a relatively recent addition to Tbilisi’s roster of tourist attractions. It stretches 150 meters (490 ft) over the Kura River and was officially opened for business in 2010. I believe there is some symbolic significance to the fact that it connects the old part of the city to a newer district, but the first thing you’ll see on the “old” side of the bridge is bright neon signs for a Georgian casino so… the metaphor isn’t quite so cut and dry.

This one doesn’t have a ton of history behind it — it’s just something pretty. There are LED lights all over this thing that make it sort of a spectacle at night. And given it’s central location in the heart of Old Tbilisi, it’s hard to miss. All you can do here is walk across and take a few pictures, so that’s what I did. You’ll see some cool pictures of it from above at the end of this article as well, but for now, here’s the first-person POV.

Dry Bridge Flea Market

Okay this one is really cool. Don’t leave Tbilisi without coming here.

The Dry Bridge Flea Market gets its name from the fact that it was, apparently, once a literal Island in the Kura River. The waterways that separated it from the western bank of the river have since dried up, being replaced instead with a highway. So it’s literally a dry bridge. Honestly, swimming across that river would have been less stressful than playing frogger across this stretch of highway. Apparently my Yandex driver dropped us off in the wrong spot 😬but we survived. Here it is on the map if you want to check it out for yourself some time…

The market itself is like a big, shabby, urban park. There are vendors everywhere with their products hanging from tree branches or laid out on blankets. At first I wasn’t sure what to make of it all, but once I got further into this park… all I can say is “wow.” This place is a treasure trove of weird little Georgian trinkets, many of which date back to the Soviet Union, and some of which are even antiques. It’s like the biggest, most interesting garage sale you’ll ever go to in your life. There’s jewelry, fine china, license plates, guns, knives, axes, swords, gas masks, taxidermy, old war medals, sunglasses, silverware, pins, old cameras, Georgian and Cyrillic maps, action figures, paintings, army helmets, comic books, and MUCH much more. There is no way you can come here and not at some point say to yourself, “well… actually maybe I do want to pick something up here after all.” This stuff is all stupid cheap, and would make for incredible souvenirs, so why not?

For me, this moment came when I began seeing people’s old Soviet passports pop up on the blankets of a couple different vendors. I poured through all of their weathered pages, eventually purchasing one that depicted a particularly fearsome Soviet woman for about 5 GEL (~1.69 USD). I had to do some haggling to get that price (note that EVERY price here is up for negotiation) but here she is! Let me introduce you to… okay I actually am not sure what her name is. If you can read Cyrillic, let me know! I’m very curious.

So now I have a random Soviet passport in a drawer in my house. 🤷🏻‍♂️

I’m sure it’ll end up forgotten until I’m dead or being moved into a nursing home and my kids are sifting through all my junk to sort it into boxes. Somebody will find this old thing and go “…what the fuck, why did Grandpa have an old Soviet Union passport??”

Here are some pictures of the the cooler piles of junk in this market:

Fabrika

Okay, I don’t really even know where to start with this one. I guess I’ll start with location. Fabrika is in a neighborhood of Tbilisi called Chughureti, which is sort of off the beaten path when compared to the rest of Tbilisi’s hot spots. It’s quite a historic neighborhood, with lots of pretty old buildings, but it’s definitely not part of the mainstream tourist beat. There’s not much in this neighborhood to draw tourists in besides Fabrika itself. In my experience, these tend to be exactly the kind of neighborhoods you want to be spending time in when you visit a new city, because THIS is what real life actually looks like. I regret not having more time to explore this part of the city. When I look back on my time here, the taxi rides I took through these parts of the city are always top of mind for some reason.

Anyway, in the Soviet days, Fabrika was apparently a giant textile factory. After the fall of the Soviet Union, I believe it spent a few years as a decrepit, decaying Soviet warehouse. But today it’s a restaurant / bar / hostel / co-working space / nightclub / barbershop / store / cluster of food trucks. There are actually multiple bars and restaurants within the same space. It first appeared on my radar while I was looking for a hostel. I’m glad I didn’t end up booking here because I can’t imagine this place not being super noisy all night. But I’m super glad that we came here to hang out! This place is cool AF.

Before I get too much further, let me give you a quick sampler of some of the art that you’ll find on the walls of this place. The whole warehouse is covered in street art, like a building with tattoo sleeves. Spoiler alert: I’ve got a street art post on Tbilisi coming at you next, but here’s a lil taste in the meantime:

At face-value, Fabrika is the coolest thing for many hundreds of miles. As far as I know, there’s nothing else quite like it in Georgia, or any of the surrounding regions. The closest thing I can compare it to in my own travels is Havana’s Fábrica de Arte Cubano (F.A.C.), which has a weirdly similar name. It’s swarming with young hip-looking travelers and Georgians, and the Instagram potential of this place is off the charts. You will NOT regret coming here.

However, for something so clearly intended to present an image of something gritty, trendy, and rooted in the counter-culture, there is something undeniably synthetic about the whole experience. In my readings after leaving Georgia, I came across an article called “Fabrika and the Corporatization of Tbilisi’s Counter-Culture” where Fabrika gets an interesting but net-negative review for exactly this reason. I don’t think I’m cool enough to have tapped into Tbilisi’s actual counter-culture… but I have no doubt that it exists. That was one of my big take-aways from this article—the fact that there is so much happening in Tbilisi right now. “If Paris had the Belle Époque and Berlin had the early nineties, then it would appear that now could be Tbilisi’s golden period.”

Man, it would have been incredible to explore East Berlin in the early 90s. Unfortunately, I was a toddler at the time.

Anyway, the bottomline is that you should definitely come here. But there’s some food for thought.

Narikala Fortress + Kartlis Deda

So Narikala Fortress is the giant stone fortress that sits atop the hill against which the neighborhood of Old Tbilisi is nestled. It’s very old. It was originally built in the 4th century AD, and has been expanded and modified every couple hundred years since then by the powers of the day. There’s also a very old but recently-restored church in the center of it. The whole complex is pretty cool, but it’s not the reason I’m listing it in this article.

Kartlis Deda, more commonly known as simply as “The Mother Georgia Statue,” is a 20 meter (~65 foot) tall aluminum statue of a woman that overlooks the city of Tbilisi from a nearby ridge called Sololaki Hill. It’s right next to Narikala Fortress. It was erected under Soviet Rule in 1958 on the 1500th anniversary of Tbilisi’s founding. It’s definitely iconic, but that’s also not the reason why I’m listing it in this article.

I’m listing these monuments because they sit right next to each other on Sololaki Hill (which is more like a small mountain) and provide an amazing view out over the city of Tbilisi. Y’all know I love to find these high-up places to take pictures at sunset! Given the mountainous terrain, there’s no shortage of vantage points looking over Tbilisi, but this one is particularly cool because it looks straight down onto the oldest part of the city. So it’s a good place to take areal shots of the city’s nucleus. And, if that wasn’t enough motive to come here, there’s also a cable car that will take you here that goes straight over the Kura River and Old Tbilisi.

The cable car, officially called the “Aerial Tramway,” departs from Rike Park on the far bank of the Kura River. It costs 1 GEL (0.34 USD for a one-way trip to the top of the ridge. It runs until midnight each day. Here’s some pictures from the ride up…

The cable car ends at the foot of Sololaki Street. This street runs straight along the top of the ridge known at Sololaki Hill, past the Kartlis Deda, and dead-ends at the walls of Narikala Fortress. However, there’s a whole network of cobblestone paths that connect to this street and zig-zag downwards across the ridge. These afford some cool variation in the view over the city and space for everybody that happens to be up here at a given time to feel like they have some breathing room. It’s definitely a destination. Locals and tourists alike stroll these paths every evening a sunset. Catering to them, there are little booths that sell things as well a small cafes precariously perched out on rocky outcroppings. We stopped at one of these spots for a beer, but quickly regretted it. Although it had been 90s and humid all week, up here at our perch, cold winds swirled around us unforgivingly. This was the Georgia I had expected! However, in that moment, it was not the Georgia I was dressed for. Here are some pictures from up there as Tbilisi went from evening to night.

Before we pack it in for this article, here are a few very cool shots that my brother Joe (here’s his blog) helped me snap. These light trail photos show the main square of Old Tbilisi. We walked through this thing a million times on our trip, but it never looks quite as cool as it does now through these photos. Check these out:

From there we hiked back down the hill, deposited our cameras back at our hostel, and then asked for directions on where (and how) to buy motion-sickness medication. You see, I have some issues with motion-sickness (as you may recall from this harrowing article about my Indonesian boat trip a few years ago). In the coming articles, we are going to throw ourselves into the backs of some cramped, sketchy vans and jet out into the rugged terrain that is the Caucasus Mountain Range. There will be some incredible pictures coming soon, but there will also be vomit. You’ve been warned.

But before we get to any of that, we’ve still got one more article from Tbilisi in the queue. Stay tuned for a showcase of Tbilisi’s street art! Y’all know these are my favorite types of articles.