Georgia with children in 10 days: caves, castles and short drives
Georgia is an easier country to travel with children than most people expect. Children are welcome everywhere, including at dinner at ten at night. The food is bread, cheese, dumplings and grilled meat, which is a menu most children will eat without negotiation. And the sights that work best here ar
- Duration
- 10 days
- Pace
- Relaxed
- Hotel changes
- 3
- Best months
- May, Jun, Sep
- From
- $1,800 per person
The constraint is the driving. This route is built around it: two bases of three nights, no transfer longer than three hours, and the two long days broken by something to get out for.
Who it suits: families with children roughly six and up. Younger works, and we would then cut the canyon and the walk to Gergeti.
Your specialist: a named Georgia specialist here, with our Tbilisi partner team running the ground.
Day by day
Days 1 to 3: Tbilisi. Arrive and do nothing on day one. We book an apartment-style hotel with a kitchen, because that solves breakfast at six in the morning after a long flight better than a hotel dining room does.
Day two is the city at child height: the cable car up to Narikala fortress, which is the correct way to arrive at a castle, walls to walk along, the funicular up Mtatsminda to the ridge-top park with rides and the whole city underneath, and the puppet theatre at Rezo Gabriadze if the timing works, which is a genuine piece of art and short enough.
Day three is Mtskheta, forty minutes away: the cathedral, the hill monastery, and the confluence of two rivers of visibly different colours, which children notice before adults do. Afternoon back in Tbilisi with time in the pool or the park.
Day 4: Tbilisi to Kutaisi, with Uplistsikhe. West for about two hours to Uplistsikhe, a cave town carved out of a rock ridge, occupied for something like three thousand years, with tunnels, stairs cut into the stone, and a theatre. It is a scramble rather than a museum, which is the point. Then on to Kutaisi, another two hours. Total driving four hours, broken in the middle.
Days 5 to 7: Kutaisi and Imereti. Three nights in one place.
Day five: the Prometheus cave, a big lit limestone system you walk through in about an hour and leave by boat on an underground river, and Sataplia, where there are fossilised dinosaur footprints in the rock and a glass walkway. Both are unashamedly set up for visitors and both work.
Day six: the Martvili canyon, where you go through a green gorge in an inflatable boat for twenty minutes and get wet, plus the waterfalls above it. Afternoon at the Okatse canyon walkway if energy allows, or back for a swim.
Day seven: the Gelati monastery in the morning, which is the one properly serious thing on this list and is worth an hour with a guide who can explain the mosaics, then a free afternoon. Kutaisi has a good market for wandering and a green market square.
Day 8: Kutaisi to Kazbegi, or Kutaisi to Borjomi. This is the fork we discuss with you. North to Stepantsminda under Mount Kazbek is about five and a half hours and it is the better scenery. Borjomi is three hours, has the mineral water park, a cable car, a forest and a small train, and is much easier on a seven-year-old. We will recommend Borjomi for under-eights and Kazbegi for over-tens, and either is a good answer.
Day 9: The mountains. At Kazbegi, the 4×4 up to Gergeti Trinity Church and a picnic. At Borjomi, the park, the sulphur pools and the narrow-gauge Kukushka train up the valley.
Day 10: Back to Tbilisi and departure. Three hours from Borjomi, three from Kazbegi, and out.
What is included
Accommodation with breakfast throughout, chosen for family rooms or connecting rooms and confirmed as such in writing, an apartment-style base in Tbilisi, a private vehicle with an English-speaking driver on every transfer, child seats fitted correctly, licensed guides on four days chosen because they are good with children, all cave, canyon and park entries, the Martvili boat, the cable cars and the funicular, a day-by-day document with real drive times, and a WhatsApp group with your consultant and our Tbilisi partner team for the whole trip.
What we would change, and when
- Children under six? Cut Uplistsikhe and the Okatse walkway, add a night on the Black Sea at Ureki, where the sand is black, magnetic and unusual enough to hold attention for two days.
- Teenagers? Swap Borjomi for Kazbegi, add a paragliding flight at Gudauri in season and the walk up to Gergeti on foot.
- Want a beach at the end? Four nights at Kobuleti or Ureki adds four days and gives everybody a rest. The Black Sea is warm in July and August and the beaches are pebble or dark sand rather than white.
- Travelling in July or August? We would move Tbilisi to the start and keep the middle of the trip in the mountains, because the lowlands are hot.
Honest notes
Georgian drivers are fast and the main roads are busy. We use drivers we know, we fit child seats properly, and we do not schedule a five-hour leg after a late night. This is the single thing we would ask you not to try to save money on.
The caves and canyons are commercialised. Prometheus has coloured lighting and a recorded soundtrack. Martvili has a queue for the boats in August. Children generally do not mind at all, and adults sometimes do.
Georgian restaurant portions are enormous and the kitchen is slow by design, because a meal here is an evening rather than a service. With hungry children, order bread and pkhali as soon as you sit down.
Public toilets outside the cities range from acceptable to poor. Carry what you would carry anywhere with children.
There is no altitude issue anywhere on this route. The highest night is Stepantsminda at about 5,700 feet (1,740 m), which is nothing.
Built by your named Georgia specialist, checked against notes our founder made in the field.
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