Goris, Armenia

We had a bit of a slow start this morning, and were a few minutes late meeting our driver at 9am to start our excursion to Goris, with a couple stops at monasteries along the way.

It was the same driver that had picked us up at the airport. He gave us a warm welcome. We loaded our luggage and we were off! Not so fast to start, as we inched our way through rush hour traffic.

Once we got out of the city it was easy going. The highway is in great shape, and our driver liked to go fast (he was a safe driver though).

About 30 minutes outside of Yerevan is Khor Virap, a monastery near the base of Mt Ararat (5896m). Our driver stopped on the approach for the classic pic of the monastery with Mt Ararat in the background. We were lucky that it was a clear morning and that the mountains were visible. It’s a spectacular view, one of the reasons I wanted to visit Armenia.

I didn’t remember that Mt Ararat is where Noah’s Ark first ran aground. Per the story, Noah released a dove who came back with an olive leaf, and that’s how Noah determined that waters were receding.

In modern times, locals have trained doves and will rent them to tourists so that you can release them from the monastery, who then fly back to their owners. Anyways we declined.

We spent about 20 minutes exploring around the Khor Virap monastery. Took lots more pics, although the best view was on the initial approach.

Got back in the van and continued onto Noravank Monastery. It’s down a valley with steep rock faces on both sides. It reminded us a bit of the Todra Gorge in Morocco.

Noravank Monastery sits on the edge of the steep rock. There’s a couple churches in the complex. Luckily there were very few other tourists as its offseason. The setting is amazing with the tall rock faces all around, very peaceful. Another spectacular site in Armenia.

We spent about 20 minutes here too, and then were back in the road for the remaining two hour drive to Goris.

The road ascends through the Zangezur Mountains, which were still covered with snow at this time of year. The scenery was stunning. The high point along the route reaches about 1520m before descending down to Goris at 1250m.

Our driver was familiar with the town and drove directly to our hotel, the Mirhav Hotel. It reminded me of a mountain chalet, which I guess it is. Our room was one of the smaller doubles, based on the emergency exit map on the back of the door. We asked if we could switch to another room and the hotel accommodated us.

It was after 2pm and I was feeling a bit peckish, so we quickly cleaned up and went back down to the hotel restaurant. The food was excellent, the winner was the chicken soup that Heather ordered.

We didn’t have any get-up-and-go after lunch (maybe due to the elevation), so just relaxed and went through our pics from the day.

Went back later on for dinner, and more tasty food. It’s a cosy restaurant with lots of plants and local art.