Lake Sevan and Dilijan, Armenia

13th – 16th October 2010

After pitching up in windy Sevan we walked through the town to the Lake and some deserted holiday homes to try and find somewhere to sleep by the lake. After walking round without a soul in sight we found a couple of guys who rented us out a converted container home which was damn cold and smelt of stale wine – they moved us to a cleaner but equally cold container after a bit of complaining about the state of cleanliness and we ditched our stuff, pulled our jackets tighter and went off for a little exploring.

From Lake Sevan, Armenia

It was lovely walking round the lake and we walked through a park for container holiday homes which had an air of abandonment outside of the holiday season. We walked away from the Lake and into town eventually getting a taxi to a very upmarket hotel restaurant.

From Lake Sevan, Armenia

The place was gorgeous but the karaoke'esque entertainment blaring out into the empty restaurant rather spoiled the atmosphere. The food was good and halfway through the meal, after having asked for the volume to be turned down three times, we actually heard each other shout (the music was still exceptionally loud). We left the restaurant in a hurry and got the same taxi back to our freezing little container house with picnic stuff for the following day. The bed was so cold that it was impossible to warm it all up and moving limbs outside of the warm patch our bodies made, woke me up a couple of times in the night. It was actually a relief to pack up and go the following day.

From Lake Sevan, Armenia

We left fairly late in the day and walked to a spit of land, home to a few churches and monasteries. We sat and ate our picnic on the windy hilltop looking out over the lake, bread, crumbly herb cheese and tomatoes bitten into chunks to make sandwiches. Leaving the lake behind we hitched a couple of lifts onto the next town, promisingly described as the Armenian Swiss Alps. No such luck. It was drizzling when we arrived and the grey miserable weather suited the dilapidated resort town.
We walked about trying to find a guest house or hotel and eventually got taken to one, after walking about with our backpacks trying to find the old town, by a suspect individual working for the tourism office. This guy, dressed in a grey suit over a black crackled PVC top with a silver zip, and sporting a long pinky nail, drove us to the nicest guest house we've ever been in and stayed talking to us long after he was welcome. We settled in and eventually Djalma pestered me out of bed to go and make dinner.

From Dilijan, Armenia

We stayed put for the next day, the grey drizzling weather keeping us in, watching films and reading books and of course cooking for my hungry monkey. We left the following day and hitched all the way to the Georgian border driving along Debed Canyon. Anxious to leave Armenia and get back to Georgia we weren't feeling too bad about only spending a measly six days in Armenia, land of Apricots. Roll on Tbilisi!

Yerevan, Armenia

10th - 13th October 2010

At the border it took so long to get our visas and passports stamped that our lift drove off leaving our bags outside, fortunately for us an old Armenian guy, who absolutely reeked of spirits, offered to help us and waited around while our paperwork was completed. When we realised that there was a good chance he was still very drunk we tried to politely decline his generous offer of a lift, when he realised why we were trying to say no he assured us that his brother was driving, not him, so we jumped in his red minivan next to his daughter and her daughter and began the spine jarring, bottom numbing long drive to Yerevan.

From Yerevan, Armenia

We had planned to stop in Gyumri for the night but when he told us about celebrations for Yerevan's 2792nd birthday we decided to go with them to the capital. He invited us to stay with his family, and after collecting his son from the airport we drove to the edge of town to his house where we were fed an excellent dinner with stuff cabbage leaves, peppers and tomatoes and fried aubergine. They then took us out to the centre of town, about 5km away, just in time to catch the end of the party. We stayed in Republic Square for a short while watching the party people leave and then got a taxi back home where we slept in very comfortable beds.

From Yerevan, Armenia

The next day, after a good filling breakfast and plenty of chocolates (they gave us a bowls of chocolates when we went to bed) Sauren the old guy who wanted to help us, took us out with Juliette, his young teenage granddaughter, and her friend, to the site of the old town where Yerevan grew from. From the top of the ruins we could see his house and the whole of the city, it was gorgeous. There was also a class outing and lots of the kids were jumping about on the ruins as well, it was a lovely start to the day. We got a taxi into town to meet Mohammad, an Iranian student who hosted us for the next two nights. We kicked back at his place with an Australian/Ukrainian guy, Vardik and his Czech friend, I managed to get through to my wife, Gabby and we spoke on the phone until the reception got so bad we said goodbye. Mohammad cooked a delicious Iranian dish with tomatoes, aubergine, onions and garlic which we ate with the paper thin bread common here, yoghurt and a thin sauce that tasted a lot like clue cheese. It was gorgeous.

From Yerevan, Armenia

The next day we headed out into town and followed the beginning of the recommended walking tour, passing through Lovers Park, very pretty, lots of embassies to the Cascades. The Cascades are a beautiful set of steps with lots of fountains, small monuments and mini gardens leading up to Yerevan's 50th anniversary of Soviet Armenia, which after the surrounding gardens and flowers is quite ugly. The view from the top is stunning and the view of Mt Ararat in Turkey floating above a ring of clouds was beautiful.

From Yerevan, Armenia

We walked from there to the Opera house where loads of café's and restaurants are centred around and met Navid, also Iranian and his Italian chatterbox girlfriend, Claudia. Both of them were lovely and they took us round parts of the city, to an old market where they gave us lots of dried fruit thing to taste, it was amazing. We bought a platter of nut stuffed red and yellow cherries for my Mum after tasting most of what the guy had on his stall; Armenian snickers, walnut stuffed dried aubergines and courgettes, soft pickled walnut shells (delicious), strips from sheets of dried fruits some of it so tangy that my face screwed up before I could swallow and loads of other delicious things I can't remember, even Djalma who isn't a big fan of dried fruits loved it.

From Yerevan, Armenia

We walked through town to Kavkas, a Caucasian restaurant, where we had a late lunch/early dinner, talking but mainly listening to Claudia. She was so funny, very animated and described 90% of things as being fucked up. We walked back though town and said goodbye at the Metro, collecting the keys to Muhammad's flat along the way. After a film we went to sleep, interrupted only by another couch-surfer's snoring.

The next morning after not much sleep, we said goodbye, stopped at a café for litres of tea and a surprisingly good canteen lunch and then headed to Lake Sevan in a cramped mashrutka.

Borjomi and Vardzia Georgia

5th - 9th October 2010

After being dropped off in Borjomi we found a nearby guest house 2km outside of the centre with a lovely lady Mzia and her family. We didn't do a fat lot the four days we were there, Djalma was fighting a nasty little chest infection that we got seen to in the local clinic who prescribed plenty of tablets.

From Borjomi, Georgia

The third day after arriving we got some maps and information from the tourist office and walked to the water park on the outskirts of town. Borjomi is famous in Georgia for its mineral rich water and the watermark had a couple of fountains where people filled up 5 litre bottles for free.

From Borjomi, Georgia

We drank from the warm water fountain, the cold one wasn't recommended for ill people, it tasted like flat sulphur rich fizzy water (fart) and made us burp a lot. The park itself followed a river and was beautiful, all the trees were still green despite the cool weather and there were carpets of emerald green moss in places where the trees provided enough shade. It was a lovely walk even though we had to go slowly for my wheezing sweetheart, we followed a path to an outside pool which was also mineral rich and very good for the skin, we only dipped our feet in the lukewarm water, not about to go skinny dipping in Autumn or in public.

From Borjomi, Georgia

We walked back through town past several restaurants, none of which looked particularly inviting, and eventually found one on the way back to the guest house near the town's post office. It. Was. Amazing. We ate like kings for very little, the restaurant had all it's tables tucked away in little booths and so we sat by ourselves warming our hands round cups of earl grey tea (the joy of bergamot tea) and tucking into a feast of; veal, wild mushrooms, aubergine with walnut paste, cold spinach with spices and a huge pastry filled with creamed red beans, we had enough left over for lunch the next day which we heated up and ate in bed while watching films.

From Borjomi, Georgia

We decided to leave without visiting the National Park, the only walk we felt up to covered a minuscule loop near a lodge and we thought that one of the many National Parks in Azerbaijan or in Eastern Georgia might be a better idea when we were feeling healthier, so on the last day we got up extra early, not the most pleasant after 9am starts to our days, and got a bus partway to Vardzia, home to a Monastery complex. We got off the minibus early, the driver was an absolute pleb and a rude one at that, trying to overcharge for the ride because there were other tourists who were paying through the nose for the ride. He told us to go fuck ourselves and left us by the side of the road from where we hitched lifts with considerably friendlier lorry drivers.

From Vardzia, Georgia

The road to Vardzia was very scenic, lots of rolling hills and mountains and covered with green, the approach to the Monastery was breath taking and we made it to the entrance just in time for the first of many showers. We left our bags in the ticket office and climbed up the path leading around the Monastery, it looked a lot like the caves in Capadoccia, Turkey, there were plenty of caves carved into the rock to shelter from the sudden and heavy showers in between bursts of bright blue sky and lots of sunshine.

From Vardzia, Georgia

After a couple of hours we made our way back down along some steps carved into a tunnel and into the light happy to leave the steps and the slippery concrete behind, my knees felt like they belonged to my Nan and I was happy to walk down the relatively level path before hitching and walking to the border with Armenia. Along the way we got different lifts, the one was with a 50 year old Armenian guy with a lovely smile and 10 litres of home-made cha cha (vodka made from the left over pulp of grapes, hideous) some of which he offered to Djalma who eagerly accepted before I reminded him that he was on antibiotics! He drove us all the way to the last village before the border where he sat and waited with us before stopping another car to take us to Armenia.