from Haghpat in Armenia to Tbilisi in Georgia - Caucasian summer 2024 - 19
from Yerevan to Goris including visits to Chor Virap and Noravank
Tbilisi and back home
03.08.2024 - from Haghpat in Armenia to Tbilisi in Georgia
The drive to Tbilisi, back in Georgia, will only take 2,5 hours, plus immigration. As we can't check into the hotel in Tbilisi before 3pm, we have decided not to start until midday.
Nevertheless, I'm up early and go for a walk to the Hagbat Monastery [↗]. It's not far from the hotel (about a kilometer) but up a hill. Unfortunately, the monastery is still closed, as is the nearby cemetery. So, let's call it morning exercise.
Back at the hotel, it's time for a shower and breakfast. As there was no posting about opening times and Google didn't provide any information either, our guide asked someone at the hotel, who then called someone else. The result is that the monastery will be opened at 9am. That's the time we wanted to start the walk with the group.
So, I start my second attempt an hour later and this time successfully. The monastery consists of a number of different buildings. The main church has even huge paintings, something not very common in Armenian churches. This complex is again very much to my taste: Different rooms, corridors etc. to explore. A great place.
If you walk further up the hill you come to a modern graveyard, that is worth exploring too. We all made our way to a small chapel at the top, although "way" is a bit of an exaggeration.
On the way back to the hotel I photograph an old but restored car. People say it is a Russian Wolga. Not sure if I ever saw one before.
If it had been up to me, I would have swapped the night at Lake Sevan and the stop in Dilijan for two nights here. We missed the Sanahin Monastery and the old bridge in Alaverdi. And some time for a stroll through Alaverdi (and maybe even some parts of the industrial ruins) would have been nice.
Driving to the border was easygoing. Our driver even drives us through the neutral zone to the immigration building (after we have completed the exit procedure from Armenia, of course).
But then we have to get into Georgia and that takes time. It's the first time that we really have to wait. It takes me 45 minutes to get through and it takes roughly an hour till the whole group is in the bus. The officials aren't particularly slow, it's the sheer amount of people.
We arrive at the hotel 3:15pm and most rooms are ready - mine is not. But I'm not in a hurry. So, I sit down in the lobby and sort pictures on the laptop.
Close to 7:30pm I leave the hotel for some sunset / blue hour photos. I take the Metro till Avlabari Station and walk to the Sameba Cathedral [↗]. The church is closed, but there are still quite some people around. I manage to get some pictures from the upper platform and then focus on photographing the bell tower against the illuminated sky.
I wait till they turn on the lights on the way to the Cathedral, but there are so many people around, that I would have to completely fake the photo by cloning out dozens of people.
So, I walk down to the river, take some more photos of the Peace Bridge [↗] at dusk, and walk toward the old town. After a while, it's getting too dark for handheld photos, and I decide to return to the Metro station at Liberty Square. On the way there, I find by chance a hotel with a super interesting stairway that I have to photograph. I had passed this building during the day and it didn't look nearly as good.
At 10pm I'm back at the hotel and start with my "homework". At 11:10pm boarding for my flights back home starts. Apart from the last step, creating the boarding passes, everything goes well. This page crashes 4 times and asks me to start again. At least all the entries on the previous pages had been saved, so it could have been worse.
