Kazbegi
The mountain day everyone remembers — a church on a ridge under a 5,000 m peak.
What you would see
Gergeti Trinity Church
A fourteenth-century church alone on a green shoulder at 2,170 metres, with the 5,047-metre wall of Mount Kazbek behind it. It is the single most photographed thing in Georgia and it still does not disappoint when you are standing there.
Ananuri Fortress
A walled complex of churches and a tower on the shore of a turquoise reservoir, an hour out of Tbilisi on the road north. Everyone stops here, and rightly — it is the first properly beautiful thing on the drive.
Russia–Georgia Friendship Monument
A curved concrete balcony built out over a gorge in 1983, lined inside with a huge coloured mosaic. Soviet architecture at its most confident, in a setting that would be worth stopping for even if the building were not there.
Gudauri viewpoint
Georgia's main ski resort in winter and a paragliding launch in summer, at 2,200 metres on the same road. In July the slopes are green pasture and you can fly off the ridge with an instructor for less than a hundred dollars.