Today was our final day in Armenia and our final day travelling together. We have both very much enjoyed Georgia and Armenia after discussing it for a number of years, so it was good we finally made it here. Claire heads home to Canada, while I take another 2 weeks to visit the 3 Baltic countries that also used to be part of the USSR.
We started today with a visit to the Vernissage Market. The market used to be a market for the locals but now seems to focus on the tourist market, with lots of wooden products, ceramics, carpets and other knick-knacks and less of the stuff we saw in the market in Tbilisi, like antiques. Claire was looking to buy a carpet after not buying one in many other carpet producing countries but the colour and price just were not right today.
The cascades
Our second item of out todo list was to visit the Matenadaran. After a long walk across the city via the underwhelming cascades, we reached the impressive Matenadaran. This building houses all the old Armenian manuscripts and books, mostly kept preserved in the many monasteries in the country. It is a beautiful building and some of the manuscripts were well over a thousand years old. Despite the odd school group it was well worth the visit and completed a trio of must see museums in Yerevan.
Matenadaran
After a day of deliberation, I decided to head back to Vernissage and buy myself a beautifully carved chessboard featuring Mt Ararat. I had no need for a carpet as my baby camel neck wool carpet from Uzbekistan is still nice and soft like the day I bought it. Ironically that was the same trip Claire and I met each other.
Shnorhakalut’yun Armenia. For those who don’t speak Armenian, that is thankyou Armenia. Both Armenia and Georgia are wonderful countries, that are easy to get around in, things just seem to fall into place despite worrying and people despite being much poorer than you buy you drinks, ice creams and roses! I better go so I don’t wake Claire who has a flight at an ungodly hour back to Canada. I have a daytime flight to Vilnius in Lithuania, where my next blog post will be from.