Armenia & Georgia

After the shock of the terror attacks and a couple of months of damn hard work I was really looking forward to this trip. Of course we had to change our flights because the airport was still closed but that was surprisingly easy and non-bureaucratic (not flying low-cost might make a difference after all...) and we arrived in Yerevan leaving all my worries behind.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, this was actually our Plan B destination after Iran fell through but it could have definitely also been a Plan A. Armenia and Georgia are two very different countries and are interesting and beautiful both in their own right. We chose to spend more time in Georgia because we also wanted to go to the coast and see a variety of landscapes but  Armenia would have deserved at least an extra week to discover more.

We spent most of the time in and around Yerevan with day trips to Khor Virap and Lake Sevan - there was still quite a lot of snow around Sevan and the landscape was beautiful. From there we took the night train to Tbilisi. Those old Soviet sleeper trains are one of my favourite modes of transport, so comfy and nostalgic!

Georgia is generally much more touristic than Armenia but having said that it was still low season and we hardly met any other travelers (and we kept on bumping into the same few people that we saw both in Yerevan AND in Tbilisi). We spent a few days in Tbilisi with its lovely old town and then made our way to Gori, Akhaltsikhe, Vardzia, and Batumi at the Black Sea on the border to Turkey. On our way back we were supposed to also go to Kazbegi up in the mountains but I was sick the last three days so Thomas went by himself.

All in all, it was a great trip: relaxing, easy to organise, and people were incredibly friendly. Don't be scared of the Great Caucasus, try something different and be surprised!