Category: Armenia

North to Tbilisi

It was time to make our way north to Georgia! We woke up very early in the morning to head up to the border. On the way, we made a few stops. First, we headed to Sevan Lake, where the temperatures were absolutely frigid and we watched the sun rise over the misty lake.

We were flanked by a few dogs, who tried to follow us all the way back to the car. The whole region is full of mostly friendly dogs. In Georgia, they even have an ear tag system that indicates they’ve had their shots and whether they are friendly, with a green-yellow-red system to show you whether or not you should try to pet them. All the ones we met were friendly!

From there, we went to another monastery complex, Haghartsin. We arrived right as they were opening the doors, so it was very peaceful during our visit.

Armenian cross-stones, or khachkars, are a part of Armenia’s history and culture, and have actually been registered with UNESCO on the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. They date back to the 9th century and have elaborate artwork and motifs based in medieval Christian Armenian art. Some have been lost to time, and others have been lost to genocide and conflict with Azerbaijan, but you can still see them around the various monasteries in Armenia!

Something that we saw signs for but didn’t get to experience was the corn of Northern Armenia – either it was too early in the morning or out of season or both, but it would have been fun to try that if we had been in the right time frame.

One aspect that I found fascinating as we made our way north was the border with Azerbaijan. As I mentioned in my last post, they do have a complex relationship, and a lot of that stems from conflict over the borders. The border had barbed wire across it and each side would put their flags all around the border, on various hills so that it was clear they had marked their territory. You can see the Azerbaijani one in the image below.

The border between Armenia and Georgia was smooth. One of the better land crossings I’ve done, really. And then we were in Georgia!

Once we crossed, it wasn’t too long to Tbilisi. I’ll have a lot to post on Georgia, but my first impressions were very positive. Georgia had been very high on my list for a long time. It had been under the radar for a while, but at some point it got popular and I was seeing it everywhere in the travel community. I was excited to check it out for myself!

We quickly discovered that the relationship between Russia and Georgia has gotten… strained, in recent years. We saw multiple protests against the Georgian government for capitulating to Russia during the time we were there. Various local guides we had over the course of the week also talked about their negative relationship. It stood in contrast to Armenia, who seems to have a much friendlier relationship with Russia. Armenia’s primary taxi app was Russian and we heard a lot more Russian on the streets. In Armenia, the signs were in Armenian, then Russian, and maybe English; in Georgia, they were in Georgian and English. I suppose Armenia has a lot of other enemies surrounding them. Compared to how Azerbaijan and Türkiye have treated them, Russia probably looks a lot nicer by comparison.

I have a lot more pictures from Tbilisi and from the Georgian countryside for next time! Can’t wait to share the rest of this trip.

Armenia Asia

South to Tatev

We headed out from our hotel at 6:30 the next morning to start our tour to Southern Armenia!

When we first got outside of Yerevan, we ended up in a patch of thick fog straight out of a Stephen King novel. I’ll admit, it isn’t so comforting when your driver is taking pictures and videos because he’s never seen anything like it before. But eventually, it cleared up, and we ended up on a beautiful drive.

We saw Mount Ararat, which is an important symbol of Armenia even though it’s located outside of Armenia’s present day borders. It’s now a part of modern day Türkiye. In pre-Christian Armenian mythology, Mount Ararat was considered the home of the gods, similar to Greece’s Mount Olympus. After going through all that fog, it was nice to have good enough visibility to see it!

One of the most interesting parts of the drive was watching where we were on the map. The borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan are complicated. A lot of this comes down to the post-Soviet conflicts in the 1990s, and localized conflicts between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the border zones where the minorities were marginalized, displaced, and sometimes murdered. Various enclaves and exclaves still exist as holdovers from this conflict, including the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan that we passed right next to on our drive. There are also tiny ones that are technically a part of Azerbaijan that had no indication that anything had changed, and you would never know that the borders were shifting around you unless you were closely watching the map.

There are still tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, although they did recently sign a peace agreement in 2025 that has theoretically calmed things down. There are no open land border crossings between the two countries and no direct flights between them as of this writing.

We had a few stops on the way to get a coffee and stretch our legs, but we had a long way to go to get to Tatev Monastery.

Our first bigger stop was Khndzoresk cave village, which reminded me a lot of the underground cave villages in Cappadocia. We started by walking down a ton of stairs (which was really fun on the way back up to the car) and across a bridge.

It was a nice visit, and I was enjoying the chance to see a side of the country outside of Yerevan. Yerevan is pretty modern and developed, but it went from urban to rural quickly as we left the city.

From there, we headed even further south! The next stop was Tatev. Specifically, we were starting at the Wings of Tatev, which is the longest reversible aerial tramway in the world. It takes 12 minutes to go across the gorge from the starting station to Tatev Monastery. The views were incredible.

Armenia had a very clear vision when they built all their churches and monasteries. Most of them look extremely similar, which meant that when I was recently in NYC, I had no trouble recognizing an Armenian monastery from a brief view out of a bus window.

We also went to another outlook nearby to admire even more views of the mountains!

Once we were done visiting Tatev, it was time for the long drive back to Yerevan. But first, we had one more stop to make….

It was time to do a proper Armenian wine tasting! This region has a unique winemaking culture, and they often age the wine in beautifully decorated clay pots instead of oak barrels. A couple that they had available to try were the same grapes aged two different ways so that we could taste the impact of the clay. We got to try three types of wine and one shot of their hard liquors, which were flavored by all kinds of different fruits.

It was a long day with a lot of driving. Still, I think it’s worth it to get out of Yerevan, and the landscapes and cultural sites in the south are the most impressive sites for visitors. I would recommend this same tour for anyone who wants to get out and see some of Armenia beyond just the capital city.

Armenia Asia

A Visit to Yerevan

After a few more days at home to frantically unpack, do laundry, and repack, I headed off to Armenia! Thanksgiving remains one of my favorite times of the year to travel, and so Alan and I reunited for a trip across Armenia and Georgia. This region has been on my list for ages and I was so excited to get a chance to explore it.

All the flight options landed at weird times, so we took a very badly timed one that left from Frankfurt at 9 pm and got to Yerevan at 3:55 am the next morning. Thankfully our hotel had an open room that they let us book for essentially a half night, so we were able to sleep and shower and change out of our airport clothes, which was especially important for me since I had also taken a 7.5 hour flight to Frankfurt. Which, incidentally, was delayed by 3 hours. By the time we got to our hotel in Yerevan, it had been a series of very long days and I was ready to pass out.

After sleeping, it was time to venture out into the city. Our first stop was the Armenian Genocide Memorial and Museum.

We never learned about the Armenian genocide in school. I mostly heard about it in the context of why Türkiye hasn’t been allowed in the EU – their continued refusal to acknowledge that the genocide happened has been a huge sticking point. But leading up to this trip, I read The Hundred-Year Walk, by Dawn Anahid MacKeen, which did a great job contextualizing it. Her grandfather lived through it and left a series of detailed journals, which she used to start her research, and then she also took her own journey in his footsteps across modern day Türkiye, Syria, and Armenia.

The museum was very well done, with a lot of information about the events leading up to the genocide as well as the international community’s response as the world looked on. The memorial was nice, although it was under construction. Weirdly, we were also there at the same time as a large group of people in suits, who seemed to be politicians going for some sort of PR opportunity. We never did figure out who they were or what was happening there.

From there, we took a taxi over to Mother Armenia, which is a giant statue of a woman that overlooks Yerevan. There’s another museum in the base of it, which seemed to be run by a Russian woman who was very confused that we didn’t speak Russian and quickly lost interest in us when it became clear we weren’t going to donate to the museum. Very little was in English, which was a shame because it did seem to focus on more modern skirmishes that Armenia has been having with its neighbors. There’s a lot going on between them and Azerbaijan, which I will get to in my next post.

Once we were done at the museum, we stumbled upon my favorite thing that we found in Armenia, which was Victory Park. It was founded in the 1950s while Armenia was still part of the USSR and you can certainly tell. Nowadays, it seems moderately haunted and the perfect location for some sort of horror movie. I loved everything about it.

There was so much to love here. Off-brand characters that would trigger a cease and desist letter if Disney or Nickelodeon knew about them. The Mother Armenia statue lurking in the background. The half-built dinosaur park with massive animatronics in the background, which were moving and making screeching noises despite being in an area of the park that couldn’t receive visitors.

It’s honestly hard to describe how delighted I was here. Every corner we turned had something new and bizarre. This wasn’t the last Sovietesque theme park we came across in this region, but it was the best.

Once we were satisfied with our visit to the most unhinged theme park I’d ever seen, we worked our way down to the Cascades. It’s a large stairway complex that has great views of the city and altogether a good vibe – it functions as a sort of vertical Central Park for Yerevan, and it was the most people we saw out and about at any of the touristy sites.

We found a nice café for lunch and regrouped, since we had done the top three tourist sites in Yerevan. We ended up just walking through the city and soaking up the vibes. It’s a nice city, and I enjoyed our time there.

The day after was a very early morning, as it was our day trip down to Tatev Monastery – more on this in the next post. Then we were back in Yerevan on Sunday. We started off with Saint Gregory the Illuminator Cathedral, which is the largest Armenian orthodox church in the world. Armenia is very proud of their Christian history. They were the first country in the world to adopt Christianity as their official religion, back in the year of 301. I can tell you that this particular cathedral was very well-attended on this Sunday, so it seems like that Christian tradition is alive and well.

Once we were done visiting the cathedral, we found another haunted Soviet amusement park! Another day, another series of viscerally upsetting slightly-off brand rides. Ask and Yerevan shall provide.

From there, we headed to the History Museum of Armenia. Most of what it had to offer was ancient history, about the earliest civilizations that settled in the region. This is less interesting to me than the recent history, which I really would have loved a deeper dive on, but alas. Instead, we saw the oldest leather shoe that’s ever been found, which is 5,500 years old and was found in the Areni region.

After the museum, we had a splurgy late lunch with a fancy bottle of Armenian wine at Lavash, which was excellent. Definitely the best meal we ate in Armenia!

A few more images from our wanderings in Yerevan:

I really liked Yerevan. Georgia is obviously the tourist darling of this region, and for good reason, but I think Armenia is still a bit slept on. In my opinion, Yerevan is an underrated city and, as you’ll see in the next post, the southern part of the country is also quite nice. It also was an interesting cultural contrast to Georgia. I wish we had time to go to Azerbaijan as well to round out my understanding of the Caucasus region, but I would definitely recommend including Armenia if you’re going to be in this area! We spent four days there total and I felt like that was a great amount of time.