Batumi Guide 2026: Beach, Boulevard, Costs and Day Trips

From Tbilisi

372 km

Train

4 h, 36 GEL

Botanical Garden

25 GEL

Best months

Jun, Sep

Batumi gets oversold and dismissed in equal measure. The oversellers talk about a Black Sea Riviera; the dismissers see casinos, half-finished towers and a pebble beach. Both are lazy. This is the capital of Adjara, an autonomous republic with its own mountains, its own dialect of the kitchen and a Muslim minority that gives the city a mosque as well as a cathedral. It was a small Ottoman harbour until the Russian Empire took it in 1878, boomed when the railway from Baku arrived in 1883 and the oil pipeline in 1907, and has spent the last twenty years being rebuilt in glass. Population 246,300 at the start of 2026, second in the country. Understand what it is and you will have a good time; expect the Mediterranean and you will be annoyed within the hour.

Is Batumi worth it

Yes, on a trip of ten days or more, and it is the reason our 14-day itinerary ends here with the morning train back. Batumi shows you the western Georgia the mountain pages never mention: palm trees and rain, tea and citrus on the hills, fish markets, a Turkish border twenty minutes down the road, acharuli khachapuri eaten where it was invented. It is also the easiest city in the country to enjoy with no plan at all, because the boulevard runs 7 km along the sea and everything else sits within a fifteen-minute walk of it.

No, on a week. If your Georgia is Tbilisi, Kazbegi and Kakheti, the coast is eight hours of travel for a city that needs two nights to make its case, and Kutaisi and its caves make a better western add-on. The people who leave Batumi disappointed are almost always the ones who gave it one night in July and stayed in a tower.

The city on foot

Start at the port end. The old town, a grid of two- and three-storey streets between the harbour and the boulevard, is where Batumi feels like a place rather than a project: Ottoman-era houses, the white minaret of Orta Jame, the city's one working mosque, the Piazza with its restaurant terraces around a marble mosaic, and Europe Square, where the new buildings are done in the old style and it takes a while to work out which is which. The Archaeological Museum (6 GEL, 10:00 to 18:00, closed Monday) holds the Greek finds from the Pichvnari necropolis up the coast, painted pottery, coins and gold going back to the 5th century BC, and is the thing to do on a wet afternoon.

Then the boulevard. Laid out in 1884 and now 7 km long, it is the city's living room: a strip of park, cycle path and pebble beach with cafes, playgrounds, sculpture and a lighthouse from 1882 at the port end. Walk it from late afternoon, when the light softens and the whole city comes out, and turn back at the Ferris wheel, where the Alphabetic Tower (a 130 m monument to the Georgian script, 15 GEL for the lift) and the moving Ali and Nino sculpture stand together. Bike stands in the park charge 5 to 8 GEL an hour. Beyond the Ferris wheel the new boulevard runs on for another few kilometres past the towers to the lagoon of the dancing fountains; it is fine on a bike and dull on foot.

What to see and what it costs

Two views compete for your afternoon. The Argo cable car, built in 2013, rises 250 m from the port to Anuria hill, 30 GEL return, 11:00 to 20:30; it is worth it only on a clear day. Sameba church on the hill above the city is free, quieter and, in our view, better: take a Bolt up (about 10 GEL, 30 minutes) and walk the 6 km back down through the villages with the skyline appearing through the trees. Skip the dolphinarium; the city has a resident pod of bottlenose dolphins that you can watch for nothing from the pier near Ali and Nino around sunset.

The Botanical Garden

The best single thing in the area, and the one to do first. The Batumi Botanical Garden covers 108 hectares of hills and ravines on the Green Cape, 9 km north of the city, and was opened on 3 November 1912 by the Russian botanist Andrei Krasnov, who had spent the 1880s collecting the plants of the wet subtropics. More than 2,000 species of trees and shrubs are laid out by region of origin, so you walk from Japan into the Himalaya into Mexico with the sea below you the whole way. Entry is 25 GEL for foreigners and 10 GEL for residents, open 09:00 to 19:00, with an upper and a lower entrance. Buses 10 and 10a run there along Gogebashvili Street for 1 GEL and stop at the lower gate. Allow two to three hours and bring water.

The beach

Pebbles, not sand, and it is better to know that before you pack. The city beach runs the length of the boulevard, is long and social and easy to fall onto from a cafe, and by August is packed and not especially clean. For actual swimming take bus 16 south for 15 minutes to Kvariati or Sarpi, where the hills come straight down to clear water and the pebbles are clean; or north to Mtsvane Kontskhi under the Botanical Garden for a dip. Sand is an hour north at Ureki, dark, magnetic and shallow, the beach for small children. The sea is 25 to 27 C from July to September and still about 25 C in mid-September. Our beaches guide ranks the whole coast.

Getting there

From Tbilisi the train wins. Since the Rikoti expressway opened in full in December 2025 the road is a little over five and a half hours, but the Swiss-built double-deckers do it in about four for 36 GEL and drop you at Batumi Central, 4 km north of the old town. Book on tkt.ge as soon as the 20-day window opens; the summer trains sell out. Our Tbilisi to Batumi page compares every option with the current timetable; the short version is below.

From Batumi's own airport, a few kilometres south of the centre, city buses 10 and 10a run in for under 1 GEL and a Bolt is 12 to 15 GEL. Flights from Istanbul and a handful of European cities land there in summer; for most Europeans the cheap way in is Wizz Air to Kutaisi and the 30 GEL coach, which is what our Kutaisi Airport page covers. Our Kutaisi Airport arrival helper works out when that minibus leaves for your flight and what a driver costs for your party.

Getting around

On foot in the old town and along the boulevard, by bike for the length of it, by bus for everything else. Batumi's buses take no cash: tap a contactless bank card on the reader when you board, about 1 GEL, or buy the local transport card at a Spar or Goodwill supermarket and pay 70 tetri a ride. Bus 16 runs south through Gonio and Kvariati to the Sarpi border, buses 10 and 10a north to the Botanical Garden, and both leave from the centre every few minutes in summer. Bolt works as it does in Tbilisi and costs a few lari across the centre. Vans to Kobuleti and the north coast leave from the car park beside the Church of the Holy Spirit; vans up the mountain road to Keda, Makhuntseti and Khulo leave from the old bus station. A car is only useful if you are driving on to Svaneti or Kutaisi; our rental guide covers the no-deposit cars from about 24 USD a day.

Where to stay

Where you sleep decides your opinion of the city. The old town, between the port and the Ferris wheel, is the right answer for a first visit: every restaurant and cafe is on foot, the beach is five minutes away and the buildings have some age to them. The seafront towers north of the wheel sell sea views and lifts to the beach, and the apartments in them are often good value in the shoulder months, but they feel the same inside whichever one you choose, and the new boulevard beyond them is 3 to 4 km from anywhere you want to eat. Booking.com and Airbnb both work well here; Batumi has more apartments than hotels. Prices roughly double in July and August and drop hard from October. Our where to stay in Batumi page compares the five areas with rooms priced for October and July.

What to eat

Adjara cooks with more butter, more cheese and more corn than the rest of Georgia, and Batumi is the place to eat it properly. Acharuli khachapuri, the boat of bread with the egg and the slab of butter dropped in at the table, was invented here; a bakery one is 3 to 8 GEL and a restaurant one two or three times that, and the local rule is to tear the bread from the sides and stir the middle before it sets. After that: borano, cheese melted in butter until it is more butter than cheese, eaten with cornbread; sinori, thin pastry rolled with nadughi curd and poured over with butter; and Black Sea fish, fried whole. Our what to eat guide covers the national dishes you will find here too.

The fish market is the meal to plan a day around: 2.5 km from the old town past the port on the Botanical Garden road, open 10:00 to 22:00. Choose your fish in the market hall, hand the bag to the kitchens next door, and they fry it while you wait; you eat at picnic tables by the water. It is loud, cheap and the most Batumi thing you will do. In town, the Piazza and the streets around it hold the restaurants; the guesthouse and family kitchens in Keda and Makhuntseti are where the mountain dishes are best, which is one more reason for the Upper Adjara day.

Day trips

Batumi is a base as much as a destination. The Botanical Garden and the coast south to the border are half days on a city bus; Upper Adjara is a full one. The Makhuntseti waterfall, 30 km inland on the Khulo road, is a tall fall with a swimming hole at its foot, a short trail from the road, with a hump-backed medieval stone bridge across the river on the other side and a second waterfall and arch bridge at Mirveti nearer the city; the Khulo vans from the old bus station take about an hour and cost 10 GEL, and there are wineries in the valley for a tasting on the way back. Mtirala National Park, 30 km north-east of the city, is rainforest in all but name (the name means the crying one, for the weather) and has been part of the Colchic Rainforests World Heritage site since 2021, with a 7 km loop from the park office at Chakvistavi to the Tsablnari waterfall. Both are easier with a driver or a tour, which is also how most people reach the Martvili canyon and Prometheus cave, a ten-hour day that starts in Samegrelo.

Evenings

Batumi is better after dark, when the towers light up and the boulevard fills. The routine that works: a walk from the port to the Ferris wheel from about 18:30, Ali and Nino turning at 19:00, a drink somewhere on the seafront, a late dinner, and a walk back. In summer the dancing fountains on the lagoon of the new boulevard run to music from 20:30. The sky bars are the tourist version of the view; the one in the Alphabetic Tower costs 15 GEL in the lift alone and is glassed in, while the open terrace on top of the Radisson Blu costs nothing but a drink. The casinos are part of the scenery whether you go in or not, and the clubs and beach bars run from June to September. It is not a big-night city; Tbilisi is, and people who want that should not come here for it.

When to visit

Batumi is the wettest city in Georgia: about 2.4 metres of rain a year on the 1981 to 2010 normals, with November the wettest month at over 300 mm and May the driest at about 84 mm. It rarely gets cold, but from November to March it is grey, damp and quiet, with hotel prices at their floor and half the seafront closed. July and August are the resort season: sea at 25 to 27 C, humidity to match, every room booked and the fountains, clubs and beach bars running. June and September are the months we would choose. The sea is warm enough, the boulevard is full without being packed, and the trains and rooms are easier to get. Our summer guide and autumn guide cover the rest of the country in the same months.

Costs

Batumi is cheap by any coastal standard and no longer the bargain the old blog posts promise. Rooms, not food, are where the money goes: a Saturday in October costs 80 GEL in a good old-town studio and 256 GEL and up in a hotel with breakfast, and the same rooms cost about double in August. Everything else is a few lari. For the country-wide picture see how much Georgia costs, and run your own numbers in our trip budget calculator.

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