Why Tbilisi needs a local guide
Tbilisi is built into a gorge along the Mtkvari River. The old town has sulfur baths that have been running since the 13th century, a cable car to a Soviet-era hilltop fortress, and narrow wooden balconies stacked five stories high. The wine is fermented in clay qvevri buried underground.
Georgia welcomed over 7 million visitors last year and Tbilisi is the entry point for nearly all of them. Most stick to the sulfur bath district and the cable car to Narikala Fortress before moving on to the countryside. They miss the backstreets of the old town where five-story wooden balconies lean at angles that defy physics and grandmothers hang laundry between them. They never find the unmarked wine bars on Lado Asatiani Street where natural qvevri wine is poured from clay pitchers and the supra toast traditions can last an entire evening. To become a tour guide in Tbilisi is to introduce people to a city that ferments everything, from wine to conversation. The Dry Bridge flea market on a Saturday morning is a crash course in Georgian history: Soviet medals, Orthodox icons, oil paintings from the Pirosmani school, and silver drinking horns that someone's grandfather used at every feast. If you want to become a tour guide in Tbilisi, you need to understand the khinkali ritual, know which bathhouse in Abanotubani has the best private room, and be ready to explain why Georgians pour wine from a ram's horn without spilling a drop. Becoming a tour guide in Tbilisi means being part storyteller, part feast-master, and part sommelier for a wine tradition that started 8,000 years ago.