We had a reasonable night’s sleep after our late arrival but were still awake early, so headed out in search of breakfast. Nothing much was open, maybe because it was Sunday, though we did find a cashpoint, giving us more options for eating; you can’t exchange the local currency (Lari) outside the country and smaller places don’t all take cards. In the end, we headed back for breakfast at the hotel. The food was good enough, particularly a tomato and cucumber salad made with large, juicy beefsteak tomatoes and sprinkled with a herby salt and ground walnuts, but the buffet was light on the traditional Georgian food we’d hoped for.

After breakfast, Martyn and I headed off up the steps to the Betlemi churches on the hill, leaving Rosie and Sam hunting for a local SIM card. Despite what it said in our Rough Guide, I didn’t feel comfortable going into church during mass with my head uncovered, looking at what other women were wearing, so I stood outside the lower church listening to the beautiful polyphonic singing, for which Georgia is famous. People drift in and out of Orthodox services in a way that seems odd to us and there were teenage girls sitting on the steps outside, on their phones, wearing headscarves and with scarves wrapped around their jeans in place of the longer skirts and dresses worn by most older women.

Later, when the main service was finished, I returned with a headscarf so I could go into the church. It still didn’t feel right to take photos but we were fortunate to be there for some short of short service (maybe the Angelus?), with more gorgeous singing from a small group of people, in call and response with the priest. We were able to photograph some of the frescoes in the upper church, mostly retelling familiar Bible stories but with added St George action. I found the exhaustion of the disciples in the garden at Gethsemane very moving.

There are spectacular views over Tblisi from the terrace outside the church.

From here, we climbed up further to the huge, aluminium Mother Georgia statue, erected in 1958 and holding a wine bowl and a sword, apparently reflecting Georgia’s welcome to friends and enemies, respectively. We walked a little way along the ridge then slowly back down the hillside towards the hotel. There was more diversity of plants in flower than I expected, though mostly common weedy species – knapweed, pinks, rather lovely yellow wild Hollyhocks and various ‘members of the pea family’.

We ate flatbreads stuffed with cheese (khachapuri) and refried beans (lobani) for lunch in the shady square near our hotel, before meeting in Liberty Square for a walking tour of Tblisi, with guide Alex. The two hour tour covered mostly the west side of the river, some of which we’d explored in the morning; the city walls, clock tower and the Anchiskhati church, before a brief foray across the river on the Bridge of Peace and back to the sulphur baths. There were the standard visits to souvenir shops, with compulsory fruit wine and spice paste tasting, but we mostly managed to avoid shots of chacha, the local hooch. By mid afternoon the temperature was approaching 30 Celsius, so I was not that disappointed not to be climbing up the hill to the Narikala fortress, as we’d expected, though a bit more depth to some of the history we were offered would have been nice.

We did learn that the gloriously-wonky Gabriadze clock tower next to the marionette theatre was built in 2010, purely as social media click bait and I was interested in the modern bath house next to the mosque, built and decorated to look like an Uzbek madrassa…

We crashed out for a while before dinner, which Rosie had booked at a restaurant called ‘Chacha time’, whose USP is cocktails made with chacha, instead of the usual spirits. In the end, we decided to forego these delights in favour of local lemonade and beer. The food was delicious; mostly middle-eastern style and grilled over charcoal, plus a herring and potato salad with a nod to Russia and a glass of qvevri wine. Though described as white, this turned out to be an orange wine, more like a dry rose. More about the excellent Georgian wines when we stay on a vineyard, near Telavi, in a few days time…. I’m glad we’ll be coming back to Tblisi after a week or so in the countryside as I feel there is lots more to explore.