Blogs from Armenia, Asia - page 2

The Sun ain’t up, the sky ain’t blue, what on Earth should we both do? The morning breaks. We remain positive about an extremely hard mattress and a bit of lost sleep and prepare ourselves fo breakfast. The hôtel table is laden with local food. Cottage cheese and feta, tomatoes, peppers and cucumber, parsley and spring onions, eggs, apricot jam, and butter. Only the frankfurter sausages look out of a tin. The bread is a fresh squidgy confection - delicious. The low cloud still clings to the mountains around us. We decide to explore this ancient town of Goris on foot until lunch then drive to the gorge of Khndzoresk, 10km away. The monastery of Tatev, perched high on a mountain, is the main site in the area and the reason we are here. But until ... read more

We packed and left the Moscow boutique cinema hotel this morning, breakfasted as normal on delicious pain au raisins at Baguette & Co just round the corner, then made our way to the enormous Ayn Savid Hotel to pick up a hire car. And so began our rather epic journey over mountains to the southern town of Goris. Satnav said 254 kilometres and 3 hours 45 mins. We found our way bit by bit out of the traffic hotspot of Yerevan. Then trundling along for some time on E117 until directed off up into the hills and mountains, higher and higher, my ears popping. The hills initially seemed like brown scrubland, deprived of rain... and then it rained. We seemed to go from plains to hills, to valleys to hills to craggy mountains to cloud land. ... read more

Yerevan is a city filled with arches. Throughout the façades of the buildings of Republic Square, the same Roman simple arch is see again and again in its architecture. e.g. The façade of the National Museum is a set of arches, and the new building attached designed for the museum’s collection features a modernistic Roman arch. And theme continues around the Square, eg. a new Marriott hotel boasts fine stone facing and beautiful carving around ....... arches. We visited the formerly mentioned National Museum today ....... to find it closed on a Monday. So we adopted a new plan and continued east on to Buzand Street. Here was a ‘local modernist’ building from Soviet times, the 3rd Government Building, made up of very stylish tall arches, reminiscent of many modern arched façades...... a touch of Bauhaus. ... read more

Here we are in Yerevan, staying in a hotel which used to be, and still is, partially at least, a cinema. According to Wikipedia it was built in the 1930s on the site of a church which had been demolished by the Soviets. It is an extraordinary place. We enter up a sweeping flight of stone stairs from a square with a huge fountain and a giant Louise Bourgeois style metal spider. There is a phalanx of glass doors, only one pair of which opens. Inside is a large semicircular foyer with a reception desk and a substantial bar and a coffee shop. According to Wiki there are 4 cinema halls, as yet unseen by us. Above the doors there are 2 tiers of balconies with large posters of cinema stars covering the spaces. We access ... read more

Day 9 Georgia and Armenia. Sunday 18th Sept. All churched out in Armenia I can’t remember why I ended up booking a private tour for today’s trip to Armenia, maybe it wasn’t much more expensive than a group tour, maybe only a private tour was available or maybe I just couldn’t be bothered to mix with other people every day. Who knows! Either way Irakli, our guide for the day, was on time this morning and we were soon heading to the border. We passed some washing powder shops on the way where Armenians stock up as it is so much cheaper here. We also heard stories of mixing between Georgians, Armenians and Azerbijanis. Apparently the latter not drinking is a problem…..and their not eating pork….. Not sure how he’s going to take to having a ... read more