Echmiadzin, The Armenian Vatican City and Ararat Brandy tour

For our third full day in Armenia, we decided to head to Echmiadzin, the country's holy city where the head of the Armenian Apostolic church resides. Echmiadzin was the capital of Armenia between 180 and 340 AD when the country first converted to Christianity and there are several important churches and a cathedral there.


After the previous day's ultra annoying tour group experience, we decided to stick to using public transport so we headed to Kilikia bus station. We caught an ancient gas powered bus to Echmiadzin. The driver had to get out of the bus and go round the back to start it up! It was a really local bus full of people with metal pails full of vegetables and meat staring curiously at us. It took jut over 30 minutes to slowly trundle to Echmiadzin and the driver only had to restart the engine once on the way.

Gas powered local bus with the engine in  the back. Many of these buses had spare gas cylinders stored on the roof.

We visited the main cathedral and walked over some rough ground towards a smaller church with good views of Mount Ararat and took some pictures. Then we spent a little more time wandering around the nice old buildings and a large graveyard before taking a marshrutka (a private passenger carrying minivan) back to Yerevan. It was much quicker than our gas powered bus had been but not as charming or as fun!

A rather brutal looking modernist church just by the bus stop in Echmiadzin.

Local artist standing next to his rather gaudy rendition of Echmiadzin's main cathedral.

The Cathedral of Echmiadzin, which was founded in the 4th century by Saint Gregory the Illuminator. This cathedral is now the seat of the head of the Armenian Catholic church and the latar is built over an ancient pagan fire worshippoing pit though unfortunately we didn't get to see it.

 Beautifully decorated ceiling from the Echmiadzin cathedral.

Interesting frescoe on the cathedral wall. Note the weird looking disfigured sea horse creature on the bottom left corner.

Close up of the weird looking disfigured sea horse creature.

View of the smaller church with a view of Mt. Ararat in the background.

Church of St Gayanne. It was built to honor one of the Christian virgins killed by the Armenian king.

Another attempt ot capture that damn pesky Mt. Ararat!

Our next stop for the day was a guided tour of the famous Ararat Brandy factory that also included a brandy tasting session at the end. The brandy factory was housed in a very imposing looking building surrounded by neat gardens. It was a but confusing finding the correct way into the factory and at first we tried to wander in the employees entrance but eventually we got the right gate and were buzzed in. It was a very secure compound and we were led to the reception/shop area by a guard where we bought our tickets for the English language tour. The tour was really interesting and informative. We visited the barrel rooms where all the brandy kegs are kept and matured. The guide explained how the brandy was aged and blended and told us that all the barrels were made out of the sane wood, Russian oak. At some point they had been tempted to use Armenian oak but they found that there were not enough trees of the correct age for that to be sustainable so they had to stick to the Russian variety. There was a delicious alcoholic smell in the barrel room caused by the alcohol evaporating through the wooden barrels. This smell is called the "Angels' share" apparently and it made us feel drunk just wandering around the room! The guide said that the "Angels' share" was responsible for making Ararat's workers so cheerful all the time and keeping them free of illness!

Ararat Brandy is one of the iconic brands of Armenia.

Stacked oak barrels filled with maturing brandy.

Glass tubes used to transfer the brandy to different barrels without contaminating it.

Rowan enjoying his portion of the "Angels' share"!

We also saw the "Barrel of Peace" that won't be opened until Armenia has peace with Azerbaijan (they have several tense border disputes that are still unresolved) and we were shown several special "President's barrels" that had been dedicated to presidents of various countries who had visited the factory and which were being aged until the president called for them.

Barrel of Peace.

One if the many presidents' barrels.

Apparently Peter Gabriel visited the factory in 2008. Somehow this picture just made me laugh.

Next came the best part of the tour, the degustation (that's "tasting" but in a more pretentious guise!). We were sat at a round table with a large group of friendly Armenians and Iranians and got to taste 3 different Ararat brandies - a 3 year old, a 10 year old and a 25 year old. Our guide explained the correct way to pour a measure and told us about the "legs" of the brandy and how they can be used to determine the age and the quality of it. The "legs" can be seen when the brandy is swilled around the sides of the glass. They are the lines of brandy running down the insides of the glass. The "legs" of young brandies tend to run down the sides very quickly but older brandies' "legs" take much longer to fall. We all had fun testing this theory out on our different aged brandies and found that it worked just as she had explained!

The three differently aged brandies at our degustation.

We started by drinking the youngest one first and it was a bit rough on the palate though neither Rowan nor I are big brandy drinkers, in fact I never normally touch the stuff. The second was was better but the oldest one was the best, smooth, mellow and flavourful. It was also the darkest coloured of the three as they got darker with age. Our guide explained how to toast correctly in Armenia when drinking brandy too - "One (drink) to quench your thirst, two for happiness, three for joy and four for craziness!". We left the tasting feeling quite "happy" rather than "crazy" and ended up buying a bottle of Georgian wine from the Ararat factory shop as we didn't really want a big bottle of brandy.


Next, we took a taxi over to the Mother Armenia statue that stands watch over Yerevan on a large hill behind the city. We visited a small museum there dedicated to the recent war with Azerbaijan. It was staffed by the usual gang of grumpy older women who followed us around and hassled us through as quickly as possible - a hangover from Soviet times perhaps as its something we have encountered again and again in former Soviet countries. We looked around a small amount of the downstairs Second World War exhibit but the grumpy women drove us out before we'd seen much and closed the museum 15 minutes early so they could slope off home. It's a hard life being a museum attendant in Armenia! We were suitably unimpressed as we wandered back out into the intense heat of the Yerevan afternoon. We took some pictures of the views over the city and clambered over some cool old military vehicles that were parked up by the museum. 

The Mother Armenia statue.

A chalked piece of graffitti gicing the basic chords of "Let it be" by "The Beateals" outside the second world war museum.

Phallic tank gunnery.

View of Yerevan form near the Mother Armenia statue.

Then we took a stroll through a nearby Soviet era amusement park full of dodgy looking rides that became gradually more decrepit and overgrown the further we walked into it, disturbing courting couples and potential muggers along the way. In the rusty depths of the park we found an entrance to the cascades, a series of fountains and flights of steps that ran all the way down the hill into the city and the opera house. It was a very brutal looking Soviet piece of architecture but it would have looked very grand and imposing if it wasn't half finished. As it was, many of the fountains were bereft of water and a lit of the upper levels were full of twisted metal and looked more like building sites. Still, it was better towards the bottom and made some nice photos. 

Abandoned looking flying chair ride.

Anger towards Azerbaijan still seems to be high in Armenia after the fairly recent border wars they've had there.

Rowan standing mid way down the cascades.

One of the few filled and finished looking fountains in the cascdades.

Cascades seen from the bottom.

We treated ourselves to a drink at one of the overpriced outdoor cafes around the Opera House then ended up having dinner at the same kebab restaurant as we'd visited on our first night in Yerevan - the tabbouleh there was great!

Having a bit of a mess around on the old uke in the tiny common area of our hostel watched over by a plaster cast of Plato.