This is my first try at doing a travel blog on a website. I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to set up this thing; but hoping it works out in the long run.
Gate1 Travel 6/18/23 to 7/3/23 3 flights over; 3 flights back 7 people in group — one in a wheelchair. See — it CAN be done!
Armenian Tour Guide: Sira – single 32 YO female Linguist. Lives with mother in Yerevan
Georgia Tour Guide: Nick – single. Lives with mother in Tbilisi
This is the Doha, Qatar Airport. It’s serene and beautiful. Just a lovely place to fly into and spend a couple hours. Layovers are never fun, but this place makes it a little more tolerable.
Look at the workers cleaning these windows. I hope they get hazard pay!!
I arrived in Yerevan, Armenia at 12:50 AM and was picked up by a Gate1 agent and taken to the Marriott Hotel, located across from the Republic Square. The square used to be called Lenin Square until he was ousted and Armenia got their freedom.
This is Mother of Armenia monument located in Victory Park. It was built in deference to their freedom from Communism. The statue was huge. Stallin was once atop there; but was tumbled when Communism left.
This was the view of the city from Mother of Armenia. They are very proud of their main road seen vertically on the right side of the photo.
This was a MIG fighter plane in Victory Park. I only know the name from Tom Cruise’s Top Gun movies. But some guy from Armenia, named MIGgchbvgdgdhffjf something invented it.
They are proud of their obelisk representing their freedom.
While I’m in foreign countries (with available WiFi), and when Tom is taking a nap, I peruse Face Book. I found this and think this is hilarious.
This was the Matenadaran Museum, home to one of the largest collections of ancient manuscripts. They not only had Armenian writings, but important and old book from neighboring countries. They also restore old books.
The are VERY proud of this guy who invented the 36-letter Armenian alphabet. Later another smart guy added three more letters, since they couldn’t say their th’s.
It is pretty cool since they don’t use our letters, nor the Chinese/Japanese letters either.
They have the largest book and smallest books in the world (country?) One was 60 pounds and the other 19 grams.
Not only are these pretty birds and flowers the Armenian alphabet, they also represent numbers. Read from top left down. Each column is the one’s, ten’s, hundred’s and thousand’s place. Cool!
Below are photos of the SIX escalator levels to the top of the Cascade and the artwork displayed on the prominade and the different levels inside.
This area was called the Cascase. An architect decided to take the mountainside and make steps and a beautiful walkway/prominade. This is a statue of the architect and behind him are the stairs he designed.
Typical countryside.
These are called cross stones and you see them everywhere the monasteries were. Beautiful and hand-carved. Rectangular monuments that are installed in the courtyard of the church, in memory of the adoption of Christianity, national holidays or martyrs
I try to always light a candle for my gramma who used to light a candle at her Catholic Church every Saturday. It turned out that this is was a Saturday. Note the water in the sand. Interesting. At least, if the candle falls, it goes out in the water.
This was our first monastery and we continued to visit them throughout Armenia and Georgia.
We learned that we could tell if the church was active in that it had curtains near the alter and there was a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary. So this was an active alter they used for services. All churches had their masses/services from 11:00 to 1:00 PM every Sunday.
Our first church was up a mountain. They ALL seemed to be constructed at the top of hills and mountains. That’s why I could eat three BIG meals a day on this trip and come home the same weight as I left.
We met the man who climbed this mountain to put up the three crosses. If you look closely, you can see two more above the obvious one.
After our tour of this Geghard Monastery, these professional singers gave us a 20 minute concert of beautiful music.
This is the pagan temple, Garni. It’s one of the only pagan temples left in Armenia. It had a church built next to it and bath houses. An earthquake tumbled them all and the only edifice restored was the temple.
On our way walking to the temple there were all sorts of broken pieces of building parts that the restorers could figure out when they used to be in the temple building.
The temple is more than 50% restored, so UNESCO does not fund it. UNESCO—United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
UNESCO has all sorts of strange rules for funding. One is that a restaurant cannot be so many meters from the edifice. So some VERY famous building in Europe somewhere isn’t funded, since a restaurant resides next door.
This is Lynn and Alice getting up to the temple. My guess is that the people back then were very tall. — WRONG! The steps were built that way so that you must bow to the Gods and leaders as you climb, as Lynn is demonstrating.
It was a musical day for us. We had a duduk concert from this professional. A duduk is like our oboe.
The outift was a typical Armenian musician costume.
He also played a sring, which is much like the recorders we probably all played in elementary school.
What a motley crew!! Deena was the best-dressed in expensive and very nice clothing. Lynn only wore long dresses, because she packed she and her huband’s, Butch, clothes into ONE suitcase weighing 30 pounds.
I mostly only wore those yoga pants. They were all a solid color to match my multi-colored tops, didn’t require underwear, had a flat pocket for a room key or phone.
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And this was the making of the famous Armenian Lavash. It was a simple bread — flour, water, salt and a little yeast.
You see to the right, a woman rolling out the dough like you would for a pie crust or pizza crust. She would toss it to the smiling woman who would throw it in the air and toss it around until I got to be the size of that apparatus to her right. She’d stretch it a little more, pick up the apparatus and slam it against the wall in the hole in front of her, which was an oven. You can see it in the hole getting burnt on the sides. After one minute it was cooked and she tossed it on the blanket.
Note the lady’s leg sticking out. She just did that to demonstrate the hole she sits in while throwing around the dough. At first we thought she didn’t have legs.
We then tore off a chunk, added some cheese (some of the saltiest cheese you’ll ever taste — stays fresher when not refrigerated) with some herbs of rosemary, basil, etc., roll it up and eat it.
