Living in Abu Dhabi: Yerevan, Armenia

Yerevan, Armenia

Where the heck is that? This is exactly what I said when my friends Robert and Vinesh suggested that we fly there for a long weekend in June. Carmen and kids were already back in Canada so I figured what the heck. It didn’t take too much research to realize that this was going to be a nice little get away. I also realized through facebook that my good friend Clinton had visited Armenia a couple of occasions so he was able to point us to a number of good spots.

First, for those of you that don’t know, Armenia is a small mountainous country in the south region of Eurasia. This little country borders Georgia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Iran. Armenia was a former republic of the Soviet Union but became independent in 1990. It’s known for its cultural and religious background. The Kingdom of Armenia was supposedly the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its religion. (information courtsey of Wikipedia)

We ended up spending all of our time in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. We flew to Yerevan on a discount airline called Fly Dubai which often offers deals to locations like Yerevan where other airlines wouldn’t normally fly. The flights are cheap and they’re direct, both features of flying that are close to my heart.

Yerevan was interesting and as the research indicated, was full of culture. It also was very nice as there didn’t seem to be much in way of tourists. Sounds hypocritical since we are tourists, but this way we felt we could better blend in with the locals.

We spent most of the two days basically checking out the city centre of Yerevan. Overall a small city centre which we could see tour around in 3-4 hours. We also took a couple of tours that were just out of the city. Both out of town tours were recommended by Clinton and both were a hit.

A funny story – on the first day after touring the city centre we decided to see if we could venture out of the city. When we asked someone on the street which was quicker to get to, the lady replied, Garni Temple and Geghard Monastery. She figured by taxi it would take 20-25 minutes. We jumped into the first taxi we found and described the place we wanted to go. Now you would think that local taxi drivers would have heard of their top tourist attractions... but maybe not! Anyway, it was clear this guy either didn’t understand us or didn’t know where it was. We stopped the taxi and found someone to translate the location to him. Once this was done, all seemed good….wrong! The estimate of time to get to the location was based on going 100km/hr which was neither possible with the road conditions nor the 1978 Lada that didn’t seem to go over 50km/hr. Luckily none of us were on a schedule so we sat back and enjoyed the ride. Further proof that this taxi driver hadn’t ever been out to these tourist spots was confirmed after stopping for the third time to ask for directions. Finally we arrived at the Garni Temple.

The Garni temple is an old Roman pagan temple that reminds you of the pantheon in rome. Garni temple is lovely, however, most impressive is the beautiful scenery around. We took tons of pictures.

After Garni we got back into the taxi and went to Geghard Monastery. Geghard is a beautiful monastery partly carved in a mountain rock surrounded by the mountain tops and stays well hidden in the valley. It is a must see point in Armenia. After snapping more pics we made our venture back to the city. An approximate hour round trip turned into three hours but in the end it was worth it.

The first evening we went for supper at a local Armenia restaurant. The restaurant was quite small (maybe only 8-10 tables) but the atmosphere and decor was very local. They had a local lady playing the piano and a man singing in armenian. Can't say what he was singing about but non the less it was nice background noise... The the food, wine and service was superb, I can see why it was so higly touted.

The second day we went to the base of Mt Ararat, called Khor Virap. Mt Aratat is actually in Turkey but Khor Virap provides a spectactualor view of the mountain. As you can see from the pictures, there was a little cloud cover so we couldn’t see all the mountain. One of the interesting facts about this mountain is that it supposedly is where the Noah’s Ark voyage ended. Interesting site for a quick tour trip.

Coming back into town we decided to hit their local flee market. Its probably the biggest market I've ever been to, but the disappointing part of it was that the vendors weren't willing to barter. Pretty much was...here's the price, take it or leave it...

In the end, I think all three of us had a great trip. For a short 2-3 day excursion, I would definintely recommend Yerevan. Enjoy the pics