My Armenian Sandbox: The Last Day in Yerevan

Five am on the 25th, we woke up to say goodbye to the first batch of students leaving for America, Collette, Nathan and Buzz. After going back to sleep for a few hours the remaining students, myself, Taylor and Lauren woke up and planned our final day in Yerevan. We were sad to hear the Near Eastern Zoroastrian museum was closed on Sundays, so we decided that we would find the Modern Art Gallery instead. We had a very hard time explaining modern art gallery to the cab drivers, and finally we just ended up being dropped off at a Museum for an Armenian poet. We took this as a sign and went to this museum anyway. The poets name was Hovhannes Toumanian's and his life story was very impressive as he took care of genocide orphans, wrote amazing books, poems, children’s stories and plays that are still classics in Armenia.

After the museum we went back on the hunt for the Modern Art Gallery, but it was never found. However we enjoyed walking around the city while looking. Our last trip was to the Blue Mosque, which is the only Mosque in Armenia as this is a Christian country. This Mosque was absolutely stunning and had the most beautiful blue and yellow tile designs; It’s so vibrant and peaceful looking. I find Christian churches to often have intimidating art but Islamic Mosques always have such welcoming artwork.

The streets in Yerevan are extremely busy, and almost impossible to cross so there are often underground tunnels you can use to cross the street. One of them had street vendors inside selling kabobs and a donair-like contraption, which was delicious. The tunnel also had places to sit and booming techno music which made for quite an experience.

Our last trip of the day was to a movie theatre, which was built during the soviet empire. The soviet theatre was phenomenal both on the inside and the outside... however the movie choices were limited. I hang my head in shame as I tell you that we ended up watching Twilight dubbed in Russian, but it was worth the experience to be in the old theatre.

Other adventures on our last day included eating whipped egg and chocolate at a cafe, shopping and trying on some crazy Euro-trash fashions at boutiques, passing buy a bakery stand and buying the most amazing baklava of my life.