Today we have a long bus tour scheduled to Armenia. I normally do not participate in the whole visit-a-country-in-a-day thing but I am curious about Armenia and want to see if it warrants a longer visit another time. I love the introduction to the country but it is a painfully long day, especially when my stomach doesn’t feel the best.

We mistakenly arrive at the wrong meeting spot after seeing other’s waiting for another tour. We ask another guide if our tour meets here erand he says “I think they meet here, probably”. We wait for a while longer and get nervous that no one else is here for our tour yet. We double check the meeting spot and find out we are in the wrong meeting spot. We quickly rush over to the correct spot; we aren’t the last two to arrive as two others have been delayed due to street closures caused by an impromptu holiday (the patriarch has recently died in Georgia). Unfortunately the only seats left on the bus together are in the very back where we have a poor view out the window for the long drive.

To travel to Armenia from Georgia we have two border crossings stops that require us to get out of the van: one to leave Georgia and one to enter Armenia. We use the toliet facilities at the Georgian crossing and they are some of the worst toliets we have seen in the country thus far. Our border check seems to take longer than normal because there are three girls in our group with a special visa situation that delays us a bit.

Our first stop is at Haghpat Monastery, a medieval Monastery. I admire the property and interesting arches inside. There is a man that lives nearby and takes care of the monastery grounds. He is very friendly and offers to show me how to take good pictures of the structure inside. He tells me how his friend made one of the altars currently inside the church.

We stop briefly at the Dilijan, the Switzerland of Armenia; called that because its houses are similar to those in the Swiss alps. We view a lake and statue based on a famous movie that contains a Russian man, a Georgian man, and an Armenia man.

We stop at a fancy rest stop for lunch.

The temperature gets colder and the wind is biting on our journey up the stairs in up to Sevanavank, the charming church that overlooks the large Lake Sevan, the largest lake in Armenia.

We drive for a while further and we arrive in the city of Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. What we see is pretty but we have too short of time to really enjoy the city. We visit the mother of Armenia monument and the famous steps in the city center. The steps are at the end of a park adorned with art sculptures (I spy a Botero or two in there). Many in our group climbs the steps up but I choose the escalator option due to my uneasy stomach. From the top there are beautiful views of the city.

We then undergo a very long ride back to Georgia, border crossings and all. We don’t arrive back until almost midnight. The tour guide’s assistant takes some spectacular photos of the rainbows we see on the way. A fun thing the guide does during the drive is have each person play a song from their country for the van. It is a fun icebreaker but would have been useful at the beginning of the day to get to know the group better. I learn that the American rock band System of the Down is mostly Armenian. When it is our turn we choose Cher and the song Believe. The overachiever in me is glad I choose someone who is both American and Armenian.