When you tell people you’re vacationing in Armenia, you tend to get one of three reactions: “What?” “Where?” or “Why?”
As it turns out, Armenia is a beautiful, fascinating country, one you might like to consider for your next trip abroad! (Assuming you’re okay with car-sized potholes, as we’ll get to later.)
How We Got There
As previously noted, it’s not currently possible to travel from Turkey to Armenia (the most obvious route, given that they share a 200 mile border). If you want to come overland, your choices are Georgia and Iran. For fairly obvious reasons, we opted for Georgia. (Which was also lovely — see my prior Georgia travelogue if you’re interested.)
Being a bit contrarian, we decided to take a shared shuttle (a marshutka) from Tbilisi, Georgia to Yerevan, Armenia. (The other choices were a private taxi, an overnight train, or a really slow public bus. Maybe you also could have taken a plane — I have no idea.)
For whatever reason, it didn’t seem like too many people actual did this — our very well-informed Georgian hosts had to make several phone calls to even find out how you’d do it if you wanted to. They, along with our fantastic Georgian tour guide Mariam, strongly recommended considering other options. We ignored them, probably unwisely.
In any case, the necessary calls were made and the necessary information was eventually procured, and we set off!
