Valodia’s Cottage

Stone walls and timber beams define the three cottages that make up this small guesthouse near Vardzia. The buildings sit close together in a garden thick with flowers, a short walk from the road up to Upper Vardzia Monastery. Rooms differ in size and position, but each has a refurbished en-suite shower room and a bed built for the mountain nights, which run cool even in summer. You can see the Mtkvari River from parts of the garden, and a hill behind the property rises steep enough for an afternoon hike. It is a family-run stay. The current owner's relatives once housed visiting officials here informally, before turning the cottages into a proper guesthouse two kilometres from the cave monastery complex. A single stone building holds most of the rooms, with one timber cottage set slightly apart. Guests eat at an on-site restaurant, where the wine list runs to bottles made in the region. Wifi reaches every room. The Samtskhe-Javakheti area around Vardzia sits on the Javakheti Plateau, a stretch of southern Georgia bordered by Turkey and Armenia, with the Mtkvari running through its gorges toward the Caspian. Roads from Tbilisi take the better part of a day. The cottages make a practical base for the cave complex itself and for walking the ridges above the river.