de-Intimidator: Armenia

Showing posts with label Armenia. Show all posts

Friday, April 19, 2019

2019 Eurasia Adventure - Goodbye To The Caucasus

It was a transit day yesterday. A long, long, long day of travel. For reasons unknown (even to the locals at our hotel) the air connections out of Yerevan are terrible. After much research we determined that it was in fact less time and more convenient to drive back to Tbilisi, Georgia and fly from there to our next stop, Istanbul, Turkey.

A useful fact - How much can you by for $3.30 worth of Armenian Currency? That's how much we had and we wanted to use it up. Here is what we got

One large bottle of Coke Zero
One Armenian Coffee
One eclair
Two chocolate bars

And I had 40 cents in change...could have had a second coffee

Getting from Yerevan to Tbilisi was not all bad. For the first time in days the weather cleared up and we had some majorly nice views.

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

2019 Eurasia Adventure - Yerevan Sculpture And Cascade

We were scheduled to do a walking tour of Yerevan with the same guide we had yesterday. However it was pouring rain all morning. Since the bulk of the tour was going through outdoors areas of the city, the guide advised against doing it. We ended up just staying in our hotel room for the morning. To be honest after all the exposure to cold and wet the day before, we were a little beat up and needed the rest. So we finished our blog posts and both took naps.

We had talked about going to some museums but at around 11:30, the rain stopped and the sky started to clear up. I wanted to check out a rather substantial monument called The Cascade that I had seen while looking at Google Maps. So we headed out without too much of a plan in mind. And as usual, we found stuff...in this case a ton of sculpture while making our way to the Cascade which, in fact, turned out to be pretty neat.

Off we go

In the general direction of the Cascades

When we discover a veritable outdoor art museum

Then we arrive at the Cascade

The Cascade is described on various sources on line as a massive work of public art that is meant to resemble a cascading mountain stream. Started in the 1980's it was finished in the early 1990's just as Armenia was achieving its independence. when you look at it from afar it looks as though it should be a massive fountain. But there are no images on line that show it to be such. It is a show case for both art and for viewing the city as well as being a monument in its own right.

One can climb the whole thing right up to that tower at the very top. But there is also a set of escalators inside along the left hand side which as well as bringing you up take you to the various levels of a modern art museum!

Here we go

Taking in the view

The very top was undergoing massive construction

The view back toward the city from successively higher platforms of the Cascade

Looking out toward the Lesser Caucasus Mountains

Tomorrow we are back on the road

We leave the Caucasus and head to a short visit to Istanbul where we are having a little alone time with Daughter #2!

Very Sweet

2019 Eurasia Adventure - Armenian Monestaries And Temples

After a long streak of really nice weather, it turned crummy, rainy and cold. We hired a guide through contacts of #2 at the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan and headed out to see some of what is found outside the capital city.

It always seems when we hire guide/drivers there is some, I don't know, bit of drama. Maybe we have in our own minds certain expectations that just are totally unrealistic for anyone in the guiding/driving business to fulfill. At any rate, we left the hotel to go out of town and I needed to get some cash. When they stopped to let me out, the driver backed into another vehicle and their ensued said bit of drama. But it was only a small delay and we headed off. Our first stop was Lake Sevan and the Town of Sevan.

This is the second largest high altitude fresh water lake in the world. Our primary purpose for visiting was to see the beauty of the surroundings (sort of nixed by the bad weather) and to visit the 9th century monastery their. A note about monasteries and Armenia. As noted in a prior post, Armenia was the first kingdom to adopt Christianity as its state religion. Wikipedia lists 90 of them. Over the following centuries a monastic tradition developed. Two factors influenced where these monasteries were developed. First was monastery life was meant to be a separation from normal life. So there was a desire to be away from the centers of population. Second, the ongoing conflict of the ages meant putting them in less accessible locations so they would be harder to attack and pillage. The result for we moderns is that these Armenian monasteries are in very beautiful physical sites.

Lake Sevan

The monastery here near the actual tow of Sevan, Shoghagavanak, is one of the oldest dating from the 5th century

A feature of the monastic scene are the Khachakars. These are devotional slabs of rock like tombstones with various carvings of scenes and biblical texts. They are on the Unesco Heritage list as unique to Armenia

You could take pictures of hundreds of these

I chose this one because our guide pointed out some very unique aspects

A very unusual depiction of Christ whose hair is in braids, a symbol of nobility in Armenia during the Middle Ages

A similar unique depiction of one of the saints with his hand in the pose of 'the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit

Now the surroundings...sadly studies in grey

The Vista (click here)

This used to be an island but during Soviet times they took so much water out for various industrial purposes that the level of the lake dropped dramatically and now it is a peninsula

That is changing but they are not going to drown the whole town that has been built up

Eating at Home

We had told our guide during the planning stages that we were interested in any experience where we could meet people. His family lives in this area and his Mother does home stays at her apartment so he arranged for us to have lunch there (meal details will be in future foodie post)

We stopped at the local store to get some wine

Then drove into the apartment complex

Come on in!

Mom and Sister are busy cooking

Evidently there will be another 30 people based upon the amount of food

The table was set with preliminaries when we arrived

After we ate a group picture

From the left clockwise

Mom, Driver, Wife, Guide, Aunt

The conversation was good and we learned a lot

Just being in an apartment from the Soviet era was informative

Visiting the Hydro-Electric Plant

Two of our guide's uncles work in a big hydro-electric facility near by

It was built during the early 1940's with German POW laborers and is a visual throwback to early Soviet style engineering (though they use modern electronic controls today)

We were given an impromptu tour!

Sadly, you are not allowed to post pictures you take online as this is considered a security risk because it was way cool!

Next we headed for the Mani Temple

But first another brief interlude...this time for a flat tire

We had to stand in an alcove (mercifully as it was rainy as well as cold) and watch the driver attempt to change the tire

It was painful to watch as it seemed the jack was not big enough and three times the vehicle fell off it

(I wanted to say, "Why don't you but a rock or block on the sides of the tires so it can't roll" but decided to not to)

Eventually our guide called a cab to take us the rest of the way which was not super close and the cab seemed like it was not in much better shape than our first vehicle to make the trip

By the time we got there, it was raining harder, was cold and I was not properly dressed and was pretty miserable

The Mani Temple is the only remaining Greco-Roman Temple in Armenia as most were destroyed by the early Christians