Saturday, May 26, 2012

This is the top of the mountain where we took the cable car to Tatev...this cable car is the longest one in the world, taking in three mountains.

I should mention about the steps and hills that we had to climb....Evelyn's apartment is on the 4th floor, no elevator, our B&B was on the 3rd floor, no elevator.  Up steps to a cafe, down steps to get to the store...I have never in my life climbed so many steps....Armenia is hilly and mountainous.  I sure got a workout.  Lost 4 lbs even.

When we found a cafe to eat dinner in Goris, it was really dark...there were no streetlights.  Only lights from some of the buildings, which wasn't much...Our cafe turned out bad food, felt like our meat was heated up from the day before and burnt besides.  Joyce ordered potatoes, but they never came.  I said right out loud (waitress no speak english), " Hey, where's the spuds, babe?"  Of course we had a fit of the giggles.

Everywhere we were, people stared at us, right in our face, from head to toe;  one carload of people pulled to the curb, and all the faces came to the windows where we were standing...they got an eyeful, I guess. We found it very humorous.

We only saw two women drivers in the two weeks we were there. I only saw one woman smoke.  Is this a chauvinistic thing?  They aren't even allowed to grill, or barbeque.  ????

Most houses and fences were made out of rock, some then covered with cement.  I thought the Casita was bad for rocks, but Armenia is so rocky.....we found some places in the mountains tho, that were green rolling hills...(good golf course?)  But mostly rocks.

They recycle metal in a different way in Armenia.  They use car doors for fences, (Margie's favorite) and smashed cars on their sides for fences also.  I saw a fence with a refrigerator gate!