Adjara & Batumi, Georgia

Adjara is Georgia's subtropical edge — sixty kilometres of Black Sea coast backed by the Lesser Caucasus, where tea and citrus grow beside beech forest. Batumi rebuilt its seafront over the last twenty years and did it with conviction: the Boulevard runs seven kilometres, the old town keeps its carved balconies, and the mountains start within an hour of the beach.

Beyond the city the region turns green and vertical. The Adjaran highlands climb through tea terraces and tobacco plots to villages like Makhuntseti and Khulo, linked by a road that is itself the attraction. Waterfalls drop beside the tarmac, and stone bridges built in the twelfth century still carry traffic.

We build these trips around slow coastal days and one or two long mountain drives — a morning in the Batumi fish market, an afternoon in the highlands, and dinner where Adjaran cooking runs sweeter and spicier than anywhere else in Georgia.