To date we have taken three “Adventures” that I have promised the girls we would do on a very regular basis during our time in Armenia.
To break away from our custom’s hell (about half way through it), and once we got our Expedition on the road, we broke away from Yerevan and headed up into Dilijan to visit Goshavank. Goshavank is very close to Hagharsin, which we had visited a couple of years ago. The trip was fun, although we arrived in Dilijan a bit late in the fall to see the change of colors. We stopped and bought some corn from the road side. It was truly the worse corn we have ever had. My theory is that even the
pigs wouldn’t eat it, so they were selling it to tourists on the road side. Oh well. The main road to Goshavank was closed, so they rerouted us to another road. It was fun crossing a very small bridge with a very big vehicle. We have established a fun tradition of taking the dog and now dogs with us on our adventures too. So Goofy got to adventure with us also. The trip was interesting for a few reasons. When we arrived, we saw this beautiful 13th century church with these awful acrylic domes on them. I thought “what jackass renovated this church with a modern flare”. Then we see a feast taking place in the church courtyard. The people there invite us to join them for madagh and tell us that this is a celebration today for the launch of the rebuilding of the monastery complex. They put the plastic domes on to keep the snow and ice from seeping into the cracks in the church and causing further damage.
The buildings were very interesting including some architectural features of one of the churches that had worship places for Islam, Jewish and Persians built in. This seems to be a common thing in many of the churches built in that period. They figured that the churches had a better chance of surviving invaders if they added these features. Goofy hit it off with first a cow that was wondering around, then a turkey. It was a good first adventure. The first few photos are of Goshavank.
Adventure number two was really not an adventure, but more like a stop along the way. Once we got our cargo out of cargo prison and registered our cars in Armenia and got our local plates, we took 10 boxes of cargo that our family friend Margo sent to her sister in Vanadzor with our cargo. So, we loaded up the Expedition with 10 boxes of cargo, now two dogs and the kids and off to Vanadzor. This trip was notable because it was the first time the local shithead police pulled us over. I was told that I needed a local drivers license, my windows were tinted too dark, my front license plate needed to be attached to the bumper and no place else, blah, blah, blah. First I yelled at him a bit, then Houry joined in and in the end he let us off after about 10 minutes. My goal before we leave Armenia is to get one of these jackasses to let me put on his hat and hold his stupid baton and take a picture for our blog. Let’s see if I can convince one of these morons. Vanadzor is seen some rehab work since it was devastated in the earthquake, but is still in pretty bad shape. We got to Margo’s sisters house and I have to say that I was scared. They lived on the top floor (5 or 6) in a building that is totally structurally unsafe. The stairwell could really collapse at any moment. The put out a feast for us and it was nice, but tough seeing them. On the way home, we past by the road to Mt. Aragatz, which is the highest mountain in Armenia proper. At the intersection of the Aragatz and Vanadzor road, two years ago they build a monument park to the Armenian alphabet in celebration of the 1600 anniversary of the creation of the alphabet. So we stopped and took a few photos. We ended our day by stopping off in the village of Agashat to see the family that he San Francisco Church is helping. It was a nice stop and the family was doing much better. As we told our custom’s story to “Uncle Grisha”, he laughed and said “you should have called me, my mother’s brother’s kid is Armen Avedissian (THE $%$@# HEAD OF CUSTOMS IN ARMENIA!!). Motto of the story is that Armenia is a small, small place!
The third adventure was a trip to Tsaknadzor. Tsaknadzor is the local ski resort in Armenia. We wanted to go and visit it before it actually snows to check it out. Wow, what an adventure. We took along our friend Tammy K., who has recently moved to Armenia from California as well. We set off to Tsaknadzor with Tammy, the girls, the two dogs and Houry and I. On the way to Tsaknadzor you pass through the town of Hradzan. There is a water reservoir that was created there to feed the hydro electric power plant there. In the middle of the reservoir they put up a really cool statue. Then we went on to Tsaknadzor. During Soviet times, the Soviet ski team would use Tsaknadzor as one of their training sites. Then of course after the fall of the USSR, it became run down. In the last couple of years, they have been fixing up the ski lifts, etc. and it is now really great. We first visited the Church complex of Khechijis. We arrived just a few minutes prior to the start of a wedding in the church. It was pretty cool. We hung around and saw the wedding taking place. The churches were pretty beautiful and even had some ruins located on site dating back to the 5th and 6th centuries. After we left church, we headed to the brand new 5 star “Multi Rest” resort for lunch (and to check the place out). Multi Rest is a new resort that was built by one of the big money guys here in Armenia. The place is magnificent. We checked out the rooms that range in price from $110 to about $300 per night and can accommodate 4 to 10 people no problem. There is also several separate family apartments and villas for rent also. It had just snowed when we arrived and the place really looked beautiful (Armenia’s Big Bear!). We are planning to come back, stay at the resort, ski, etc. when we return from the US). The hotel complex itself had a nice restaurant (that was good and pretty inexpensive), a bar, a really good fitness room, a unbelievably excellent indoor swimming pool, sauna, game room, billiard’s room, movie theater, and I am sure more stuff that I have forgotten about or did not see. More on the resort when we actually stay there. All in all we had a great adventure and are looking forward to going back. It took us about 45 minutes to get there too, so it is nice and close.
For Thanksgiving and our 15th Wedding Anniversary, we went to the Marriott (which is the closest thing to America we could think of) and took part in their Thanksgiving Buffet. We had all the traditional Thanksgiving grub including turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. It hit the spot. Then we went off to DK and Paula’s place for dessert with Tim and Tammy. We watched the Telethon for a bit and laughed, etc. Earlier that day we had tracked down the telephone number and Houry called and ordered Armenian Cheesecake! I had seen them on the web and we figured we would give it a try. Absolutely terrific! We took a plain one to Thanksgiving and kept the mini flavored cheesecakes to try at home.
Houry left for LA to work for a couple of weeks on the 30th of November. We are looking forward to joining her on the 14th. The kids went off with one of their friends from Dance to the village where she lives. I have asked them to post about their adventure. They had a terrific time.
