Kars, Türkiye

Ani ruins day! One of the highlights I was looking forward to on this trip was the Ani ruins. These are abandoned churches and other structures in the east of end of Türkiye, right on the border of Armenia. Back in its heyday in the 11th century, Ani was a stop along the silk route, and was one of the largest cities in the world at the time. The ruins remained off the radar until more recently when they became a UNESCO World Heritage site. Ani is a bit out of the way, and most folks don’t bother making the trek out here. Just the kind of place we like :)

We had breakfast at the hotel, the usual large Turkish breakfast. The cheeses were good, we really liked the Kars Mould Cecil, a mouldy stringy cheese. (Ani is known for its varieties of cheeses).

Then we had to pick up our car rental that we missed yesterday with the flight disruption. We took a taxi to the airport, found the Avis counter, and filled out the paperwork. They had to cancel our reservation and book a new one, which was more expensive as we weren’t booking in advance. Oh well, at least we had our car.

It was a stick shift Fiat Egea, a basic mid-size. We had been upgraded on the previous rental and had got used to the luxury. The Egea felt pretty basic.

I set up my phone mount (no CarPlay here) and we set course for Ani, about 45 minutes away.

We arrived just before noon. There were only five other cars in the parking lot, cool. We were bundled up for the cold (base layer pants, both jackets, toques, scarf, gloves). It was about 3C and pretty windy.

Entrance is through the gates of the old city walls, which are pretty impressive on their own. It reminded us of the old city walls in the Silk Road cities in Uzbekistan.

The ruins are accessed by a broad path, so it’s easy to get around. You can actually see most of the ruins from the entrance, dotting the steppe.

We started clockwise at the Church of the Redeemer. Only half of the dome remains, the rest having crumbled away over time. It’s now supported by shoring, and done in a way that allows pics from one side without any shoring visible.

Next up was my favourite, Tigran Honentz. It’s perched on the edge of the cliff overlooking the Akhurian River, which is also the border between Türkiye and Armenia. The church is in amazing shape, considering it was built in 1215. I took pics of the exterior from all angles. The inside is just as impressive, with paintings still adorning the walls.

The famous Cathedral was next. We saw it featured in artwork in museums in Armenia. It’s fully under shoring and scaffolding, inside and out. You can see some of the walls buckling, so it’s good that it is being worked on. Not so good for pics though :( Also, the fallen cupola which was in the artwork is now part of the restoration. I had hoped they would have left that as-is, similar to the fallen head at Abu Simbel.

Next we walked up to and around the citadel. There’s a path that leads up to the top, where there’s cool views of the entire site. There’s also views of Kiz Kalesi from the backside of the citadel. It’s the church that sits atop a bend in the river.

There were a handful more ruins along the circuit back to the entrance which were impressive too.

Overall it’s one of the cooler places I’ve seen, I think partially cause of the location on the steppe, the sense of being really remote, and that there was hardly anyone else there. We had every monument to ourselves, and only saw other tourists in the distance. We also had a little dog that kept us company the whole time. It reminded us of one of the dogs that followed us on our trek in Bhutan.

Our gear held up to the cold and biting wind, but after 2.5 hours we were starting to get cold. We got back to the car and drove back to Kars.

We quickly changed from our multiple base layers to city wear, and went out for lunch. It was getting on 3pm, so decided to have a big lunch and skip dinner.

Kars is known for its food. It has a few dishes that are named after the town, like Kars butter and Kars gravyer cheese (just like in Okinawa). In particular I wanted to try Kars goose with bulgur pilaf, and the local version of piti.

We ended up at 1855 Gazi restaurant, which was like stepping back in time into a grand old restaurant, with large wingback chairs and fancy tableware.

We ordered both the goose dish and piti to share. We started with bread, olives, and three mezes, which were excellent.

Then the main courses. The goose is salted and cooked in a tandoor oven, then shredded and served with bulgur, yoghurt and pickled vegetables. Piti is lamb shank cooked with chickpeas, tomatoes, peppers and saffron. It’s then constructed at the table - a thin flatbread is torn into pieces, over which the lamb is shredded and the stew poured. Both were excellent. We got a tea to finish, served with a small cookie.

We were quite full as we walked back home. That was it for our day, a very successful touristing day. Did some laundry, looked through my hundreds of pics of Ani ruins, and updated my blog.