I’ve already served you up a few options to check out some of Yerevan’s (modern) art- the Cascade outdoor sculpture garden, the Cafesjian Center for the Arts and the Martiros Sarian House Museum
Garni and Geghard are two small towns, roughly 30 and 40 minutes by car from Yerevan respectively. For such popular day-trip destinations- Garni with it’s ancient temple and Geghard with it’s UNESCO-listed monastery- neither are particularly easy to reach using public transportation. There is a bus that runs between Yerevan and Garni, but none go all the way out to Geghard. You would either have to transfer to a second bus line in Garni or take a cab out to the monastery (including wait time and return), which won’t be cheap for a solo traveler.
A fun game to play while traveling through former Soviet countries is discover all the name changes of every square, park and monument from before and after the once powerful nation fell apart.
You don’t have to read too many of my posts to figure out I love museums. These are the temples where art and history are exalted, so it’s no wonder that a worshipper of these pursuits like me would find such solace there. Instead of creating some Armenian complex of arts and culture, Yerevan has taken a different approach to memorialize their poets, authors, composers, artists and filmmakers: the house museum. Scattered through the capital are over a dozen house museums devoted to cultural icons. You really are given an in-depth look at the lives and creative outputs of these artists. The museum staffs were the icing on the cake, often comprised of relatives of the artists and/or passionate devotees, their enthusiasm helps put over event the driest of material.
There’s so much to see and do in Yerevan- especially if you’re an architecture and museum junkie like me- that it can almost be overwhelming figuring out where to start. The Cascade Complex is Yerevan’s Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty and will probably be the first place a hostel staff member will tell you to go, so this is where I’ll begin as well; The Cascade (and modern art museum housed inside) will expose you to Alexander Tamanian, Yerevan’s master architect, and atop is Victory Park and the Mother Armenia Statue, which has a museum about World War II military history and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. (Yes, we're diving in head first!)
I’m going to switch it up and try something a little different with this post. Let me first say that I have no delusions of grandeur that I am some Ansel Adams in the making, but I think my photography skills have improved over the course of my travels and I thought it could be interesting to feature some of these shots in a post devoted to the image rather than the written word.
The former capital of Georgia sits at the confluence of the Mtkvari and Aragvi Rivers, a mere 20 km north of Tbilisi; despite the short distance, it still takes between 35-45 minutes to travel there by marshrutka. From Central Tbilisi you’ll first need to hop on the Metro and head toward the Didube stop. Didube is one of the central transit hubs in Tbilisi; not only can you find the Metro and numerous bus lines, but there’s a train station, marshrutka terminal and a massive market. It wouldn’t hurt to pick up some food at one of the fruit stands before making the journey to Mtskheta. (Also, make sure you can pronounce Mtskheta correctly or you won’t know which marshrutka to take as all the signage is only written in the Georgian alphabet.)
Avlabari is the neighborhood on the east side of the Mtkvari River, directly across from Old Town and Meidan Square. The area has traditionally been home to Tbilisi’s sizable Armenian population, though this has been changing over the last decade as rents rise and the community gentrifies.
Northwest of both Old Town and Central Tbilisi lies the leafy area of Vake, famous for its large park and every growing culinary scene. During the Soviet era, Vake was a popular residential neighborhood for politicians and scientists dedicated to the cause. After Georgian independence, Vake slowly transformed itself into the trendiest spot in town; the only time I ever felt underdressed in all of Tbilisi was when I went to a hip new restaurant in the area.
I always attempt to learn some basic phrases of the local language before traveling to a foreign country, but Georgian was a particularly tough nut to crack. The Georgian alphabet (one of the most beautiful in the world) leaves translators with the tough task of creating Latin-alphabet equivalents, none of which really do the language any justice. There are also many glottal sounds in Georgian that have no English counterparts, making mastering pronunciation as difficult as finding a good phonetic rendering.