Travels with Kathryn

Today was our last day in Armenia (and on this tour) and as a special treat we had a later start to the day as our first stop (the History Museum of Armenia) does not open until 11am. However, we decided to use this time to visit Yerevan’s “flea market” Vernissage. There was very little which constituted “flea” imho, but there were plenty of local handicrafts as well as the standard tourist tat. We brought 2 small pomegranate prints but otherwise managed to resist much of what was on offer.

On to the History Museum of Armenia where we were accompanied by an excellent guide talking us through Armenia’s history starting at the very beginning. One of the artefacts that they are most proud of is the recently found world’s oldest shoe – this was found in 2008 in a cave in Areni, which we passed yesterday. The shoe is 5,500 years old and was preserved under a pile of sheep dung along with other artefacts such as food and fabrics, which suggest whoever left the shoe left in a hurry!

What should not have been surprising by this stage in my trip is who Euro-Centric my understanding of history is. What we think of as the dark ages did not impact this part of the world (as they were not conquered by Rome/Byzantine continued) and they carried on building structures, fashioning things of metal, making fancy pots etc. During early history and the time of the Silk Road, Armenia sat at the crossroads of large civilisations and was therefore repeatedly attacked, but also benefited from what these attackers and travellers brought with them.

As we drove out of Yerevan, we stopped to take some more photos of Mount Ararat as today was a clearer day:

Our first religious site of the day was unusually not a church, and rather the only pagan temple remaining in Armenia. Most other pagan temples were replaced by churches when Armenia became Christian in 301 AD, however, this was protected from King Trdat III by his sister and the temple agreeing to remove the pagan God’s from the outside. This temple dates back to the 1st century AD and had been destroyed (and therefore protected) by an earthquake. It was rennovated by the Soviet’s who restored it back to how it would have been in the 1st century.

Whilst it made a change from the churches, and it does have a lovely location, it lacks some of the impressiveness we have seen of religious buildings in Armenia. Perhaps this was intentional to ensure the population converted?

Our final monestary of the trip, and probably my last Christian site for the next leg of our journey, was the 13th century Geghard Monestary. This was where the holy spear (as per yesterday’s blog) was found, and inside the church is a spring, which is considered to be a miracle created by this spear. Personally, I suspect the spring was there already…

Whilst this is a perfectly nice church, what is far more magnificent, is the fact that above it, additional chapels have been carved out of the rock and look directly down on the tomb of the church pictured above. I had this completely to myself, and with its amazing acoustics, I genuinely did get a sense of the spiritality here, and it was an almost magical end to my tour of Armenia.

And that was it. We drove back to Yerevan, said goodbye to our group, and packed ready for our 4am pick-up tomorrow and 6.35am flight to Istanbul.

This is the first time in recent memory that I have been on a non-Intrepid tour, and whilst I did have some concerns as to the composition of the group, the guides have been excellent and we have packed a lot into a very short amount of time. I also cannot recommend particularly Georgia and Armenia strongly enough. You could have a delightful week long holiday in either – beautiful scenery, fabulous food and wine, awe-inspiring monestaries and, particularly for Armenia, they really do want the tourists to visit.