What connects David and Victoria Beckham to one of the 5★ hotels in Tbilisi?
- mukhrang
- Apr 19
- 2 min read
I have been a tour guide in Tbilisi since 2016. I also graduated from the Faculty of History at TSU. Tbilisi is a city that constantly surprises me, When I guide tours, I naturally share my knowledge with my guests, but in my free time I continue learning more and more. Tbilisi is full of interesting and inspiring stories. Every day we discover something new. Most of these stories are connected to famous writers, travelers, and historical figures who are no longer around.
In this blog, I want to share a story that I am sure will surprise many of you. It is connected to the famous English football star David Beckham and his wife, pop star Victoria Beckham.
This moment happened in Tbilisi. In one of his interviews with 1TVSPORT, Beckham recalled:
“It was November 1996. I was sitting in a hotel room. The next day we were supposed to play against the Georgian national team in a World Cup qualifying match. Gary Neville was lying on the next bed. Apart from matches, I don’t really like traveling and going away. In reality, you don’t see anything—you just live in a monotonous routine that becomes boring: you eat, you sleep, and you train. You spend all your time in rooms that all look very similar.
The hotel where the England national team was staying had been opened after the collapse of the Soviet Union and was the only hotel in Georgia at the time that met international standards. The interior was arranged in a circular layout, overlooking the lobby, bars, and restaurants.
From your room, you could see the door of the opposite room. Everything was made of metal and glass. From my window, I could see a half-finished highway along which a gray river sluggishly flowed. It was definitely not a landscape that would make you want to go outside in the evening.
In short, Gary Neville and I were sitting in the room talking. In the corner, a television was on, tuned to a music channel. A new Spice Girls video began—‘Say You’ll Be There.’ They were dancing in a desert; Posh (Victoria Adams) was wearing a black catsuit. I was watching and realized I had never seen such an extraordinary woman before.
But that evening, in the stuffy hotel room, something clicked in my mind for the first time. Victoria was fantastic, and I realized I somehow had to find a way to her. Clearly, I would need Lawrence of Arabia’s outfit. I would somehow also need to find a camel.
‘She’s so beautiful… I love her. Gary, I have to meet this girl.’
Neville probably thought I had gone mad. Even though we spent a lot of time together, Gary had never seen anything like this—I had fallen in love with a pop star I only knew from television. And now that was exactly what had happened—Victoria had taken my heart.”
Of course you would like to know which hotel was it? It was Sheraton Metechi Palace
Mukhran Guliashvili
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