Tbilisi is the capital and largest city of Georgia — the country in the Caucasus, between Russia and Turkey, not the American state. It sits in a narrow valley on the Kura River, and its old town is known for wooden balconies, sulphur bathhouses, and churches that are more than a thousand years old. The name is a lovely piece of history: it comes from an old Georgian word meaning 'warm', because of the natural hot springs the city grew up around. The story Georgians tell is that a king was hunting, his bird fell into a hot spring, and he decided to build a city on the spot. In older English books you may see it written Tiflis, which was the Russian-influenced form used until the 1930s — if you read something from that period, that is the same city. It is pronounced roughly 'tuh-bee-LEE-see'; the 'tb' at the start feels impossible to English speakers too, so you are in good company.