Armenia - By train to Yerevan

We had train tickets booked for an overnight sleeper train from Tbilisi to Yerevan in Armenia. We woke up quite early (for us) and spent the day exploring some more if Tbilisi's sights. We started with the rather new looking Russian Orthodox church that's located in the next street down from our hostel. There was a service going on when we arrived but we were still allowed in. The inside of the church was ornate as with most Orthodox churches, with lots of gold encrusted icons and paintings of saints. There was some pretty singing going on but we couldn't see the singers. Not sure if it was a cunningly hidden speaker system or if they were behind some screen to one side. A priest gave us some stale tasting pieces of bread and insisted we ate it. Think that means I've ingested a piece of Christ - gross!

Onion shaped dome of the Russian Orthodox church that seems to be currently under construction just like most of Tbilisi.

Then we took the metro up to the new Sameba (trinity) cathedral, a huge, overblown affair recently built and considered by some people to be an eyesore. it was so large it was almost a parody but I guess it was quite impressive on it's own way. The inside was a bit dull though.

The massive Sameba Cathedral. It has five additional chapels and is the biggest church in the southern Caucasus.

The flag of the Cross of St George flying in the Sameba Cathedral complex.

We also visited a couple of Armenian churches and noted that there were quite few differences between them and their Georgian counterparts. In the Armenian churches, women didn't have to wear headscarves inside and there were more carvings on the walls and less painted frescoes than in the Georgian ones. We also visited one if the two synagogues in Tbilisi which was being rebuilt. A friendly guy talked to us about it and showed us around. Then we visited another Georgian church with some interesting paintings of when the Ottoman Turks invaded Tbilisi and killed many of it's inhabitants when they refused to renounce Christianity.

The interesting Georgian church with the historical paintings inside.

Painting inside the church depicting Ottoman Turkish soldiers massacring Tbilisi citizens for refusing to renounce their Christian faith. They put a picture of a religious icon on a bridge in Tbilisi and demanded that the citizens walked on it but most would so thousands were killed.

More Ottoman Turk slaughtering.

The beautiful painted roof of the same church.

Then we paid a visit to the National Museum which had large displays about Georgian gold making through the ages and another interesting exhibition on the Soviet occupation of Georgia. Translations were a but random throughout the museum, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in English and in one display only in German.


After our day of sightseeing we went back to the hostel, repacked our bags, had some dinner then headed out to the main train station and boarded our train to Yerevan. It was after 10 pm when we set off. We found ourselves sharing our 2nd class sleeper cabin with an American girl and a Canadian girl who were both working and living in Istanbul. They were nice and gave us some useful tips on how to save money while staying in that rather expensive city.

Sign in the window of our train. It says "Yerevan - Batumi", the two end points of its journey form Armenia to Georgia. The script in red is Armenian and that in blue is Russian.

Our train to Yerevan.

The top bunks folded down and were not too uncomfortable but it was quite cramped with all our backpacks in there. The toilet was gross and pissy just like on British trains and was bereft of toilet paper. Shortly after we pulled out of the station a brisk russian speaking woman conductor came by our cabin asking us questions but none of us could understand her. I think we ended up refusing our bed sheets as we thought they were towels that we would be charged for. She took our passports and quizzed us about how we would get our Armenian visas (on arrival). The two girls in our carriage had already ordered theirs on the internet. We ended up wishing we had done the same as it would have been much easier. 

Rowan sitting in our cramped 2nd class 4 bed cabin with the 2 North American girls.

We tried to go to bed around midnight but were soon awoken by the conductor woman banging on the doors to get us ready for the border crossing. We did the visa thing at about 1am at the Armenian border. Everyone who needed to get their visas on arrival got shepherded off the train and we queued up in a small station patrolled by bored looking soldiers. The visa cost a measly 3000 Armenian drahm (about 7 dollars) and looked pretty cool. I felt pretty foolish queuing up in my pyjamas as everybody else was still in their normal clothes.


We didn't get much sleep on the train as it was a very bumpy ride and we arrived into Yerevan around 7.30am just 6 hours or do after we finished getting our visas at the border. The conductor woman banged on our door for what seemed like the hundredth time to warn us we were nearly there. She seemed a but gruff but she was actually quite nice and let me use her private guard room to get changed and kicked a startled looking guy out of the toilet so I could use it! We could see the snow capped peak of Mount Ararat through the train's window as we were getting into Yerevan. Bleary eyed but excited we had arrived in our third country in just over a week!

You can just about make out the snowy peak of Mount Ararat in this picture taken through the smeary glass of the train window.

Rowan holding up a Georgian snack food that one of the North American girls gave us in the morning as we arrived into Yerevan. It was a kind of smoked cheese stick that was quite chewy and extremely salty but pretty delicious.