Armenia

We caught a minivan from Tbilisi, Georgia, to Dilijan in Armenia. The minivan could only 7 hold  passengers so it was a comfortable enough drive. I sat next to a young guy who spoke perfect English so he was really helpful when it came time to cross the border. The border crossing was easy - we were stamped out of Georgia then were taken a few hundred metres by the minivan to the Armenian border. We didn't know what to expect but the border guards just stamped us in and welcomed us to the country. Our bags weren't even checked. It was all so easy!

Armenia didn't look a lot different to Georgia from the minibus, although the land got noticeably drier the further south we went. Because we loved Georgia so much, we stayed longer than we originally planned there so we only had 8 days for Armenia. We decided to spend it at just two places and the first was Dilijan.

First impressions were unexciting. Dilijan was described in our Lonely Planet guidebook as being a bit like Switzerland. Seriously, I think the writer must have been on drugs or something. It was a nice town but pretty rough around the edges and nothing like the pretty, neat towns of Switzerland. The town was dusty (nothing new there), disjointed and a weird mix of old, new and ex-Soviet. Not that many people spoke English. 

We felt lost without a car. Many of the things we wanted to see were well out of town but it was surprisingly difficult to get around.

Just as we finally looked like organising a rafting trip, John caught a cold so the rafting plans got shelved. Meanwhile, John's toe problem was returning and my foot was still swollen so we made a decision to not go out much and to get a lot of organising done.

The town wasn't much but our accommodation was lovely. We had a gorgeous old room which was beautifully decorated but the old wooden floorboards creaked every time someone in any room walked on them. There was no aircon but it was just manageable without it as we were up in the hills here. Meanwhile, in the capital city, it was 42 degrees! Our room opened up onto a gorgeous garden so we were happy enough to hang out here and get various things organised. It was weird arriving in a new country and not seeing much of it but that's the way it is sometimes.

We had the most sensational baclava at this place though!

There was also one of the best restaurants in Armenia in this town (according to our guide book). The food was wonderful and the setting was simple.

We went for a short walk in "The Drunken Forest", apparently called that because the trees are all on a lean. We found this atmospheric ruined building in the greenery.

The street dogs here were just as friendly and well-fed as those in Georgia. We walked past an empty building and realised they soon learn to hang out where it's cool.

We needed to work out how to get to Yerevan, the capital, but trying to get info out of the woman who owned our accommodation was like extracting teeth. It took a lot of patience but she eventually told us there was a minibus and we finally got tickets on it. We were happy enough to leave here when the time came.

We arrived in Yerevan and the worst of the heatwave seemed to be over. It was only probably high 30's. We walked the 2 kms through the town to our hotel and it was a surprisingly nice city. Yerevan only has a population of 1 million people. Due to a tumultuous history, there are only 3 million Armenians living in Armenia but 2 million to 9 million live outside Armenia!

Our hotel here was a modern, city hotel but it worked really well for us. It was central enough that we could explore all the main city sights on foot yet it was on a quiet street.

Yerevan itself was a surprisingly modern city.

The old Soviet buildings were incredibly ugly though.

We soon realised that one advantage of being in a big city is that there were far more food options. After eating more or less the same foods in Georgia for 5 weeks we were rapt to find Mexican food on our first day. After that we ate Armenian food though and it was good. It wasn't that dissimilar to Georgian food but it was different enough for us to find it interesting.

It's amazing what you can learn just but walking through a city. Judging by the incredible number of beauty salons we figured there's a preoccupation with looks around here. Certainly a lot of people are well-dressed. One day I wanted to buy a dress so I was directed to a local mall. OMG - the number of shops and the number of people shopping was mind-boggling! I'm sure all 3 million Armenians were there that day. It was all too much for me -  I came home empty-handed. Later, we would see families with armloads of shopping bags. What are they going to do with all that 'stuff'?

We managed to get quite a bit of sightseeing done. First up was a museum dedicated to a very quirky Armenian artist. His work was interesting, that's for sure! 

We also went to the Centre of the Arts, a weird structure of many concrete levels. 

Inside, you rode an escalator up while you looked at a few pieces of sculpture. It was weird and seemed like a massive waste of money. 

The last sight was more interesting - to me at least. It was a library that held over 20,000 ancient books and manuscripts. It was incredible! Only a fraction of the collection is ever on show but there were books that were over 1500 years old. There were beautiful illuminated pages and documents from people like Napoleon as well as kings. I loved it!

This one is about how to heal horses.

When the Soviets ruled Armenia, they tore down many of the beautiful old traditional timber houses and erected concrete monstrosities in their place. There was apparently one small section left but try as we might, we couldn't find it. What we did find though were huge brand-new hotels and office buildings. I'm not 100% sure there are no old buildings left but I certainly don't think are many. We never found any at all.

Armenians believe they're descended from one of Noah's sons (of the Ark fame). Because the Ark came to rest on Mt Ararat, the mountain is very important to them. Poor Armenia has had its borders changed again and again over the centuries and Mt Ararat currently is inside the Turkish border. We had planned to try to get a taxi or something to take us to near the border so we could see this striking looking mountain, however as we came out of a building one day we looked left and there was Mt Ararat towering over everything. We saw it again from a number of places. It was a bit murky and it was over 50 kms away but it was still a stunning mountain. It saved us a big trip!

You think you know nothing about Armenia, don't you? But you're wrong. Some very famous people are Armenian. Try Cher for a start. Yep, she came from Armenia. Then there are the Kardashians. 

We really enjoyed Yerevan. The modern city felt so easy after the mountains of Georgia. The food was great and our bed was wonderfully comfortable!

There's far less English spoken here though. Armenia aligns itself far more with Russia than Georgia does, so Russian is the second language here. We certainly didn't see any anti-Russian slogans or Ukrainian flags in this country! I suspect if we headed out into the villages that we would struggle to communicate.

We probably didn't get that much of a feel for Armenia but if I had the choice between Georgia and Armenia I'd choose Georgia hands down.

Hooroo!
Heather and John