Climbing, Climbing, Climbing...

Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014--Yerevan, Armenia

After posting last night, I went to Republic Square to hear and watch the Singing Fountains.  It is a music and fountain show similar to the one at Bellagio in Las Vegas.  It is a bit smaller, but everyone is closer to the show, so it is quite impressive.  I arrived just as the clock on one of the government buildings chimed 9:00 p.m.  And immediately, the music and fountain show began.  I was surprised at first, because the music for the first 15 minutes was in French, sung by the famous artist Charles Aznavour.  It wasn't until I thought about his name that I realized it is probably Armenian.  And it is.  I had always just thought of him as a famous French singer.

The concert is two hours long.  As it continued, they played theme music from some films, pop songs, rock songs, etc., always with the music coordinated with the movement of the fountains.  There was a large crowd of people.  The weather was perfect.  This show happens every evening from spring through fall.  It's a delightful way to spend an hour or so with the perfect shirt-sleeve weather here.  It does start to seem a bit long after about an hour, though.

Just before leaving, I visited a while with a local man who was there.  We discussed the show, what I was seeing in Armenia, what we did for work, etc.  Lightning had been flashing in the distance for about 30 minutes.  And then the sprinkles began.  So we departed and I returned to my apartment.  I don't know if the rest of the people in the square left or not, because I was already on the edge of the square leaving when the conversation started with "Karin."

Today, I made a plan to explore further some things I passed yesterday and some other new places.  Yerevan is located on a slight slant.  I headed northeastward which is upland.  I continued on the main street near my apartment until it ended at a tourist spot and in a neighborhood I wanted to explore.  The tourist site is the Matenadaran, a building housing very old manuscripts which are mostly religious.  I didn't pay to go inside, because there was nothing that I really wanted to see.  The neighborhood I went to see next door to the Matenadaran is the university district of the city which houses several (six, I think) different universities and was filled with young students leaving classes for their lunch break.  It's a very vibrant area.

From there, I headed to the Sculpture Park and the Cascade Gardens (which is above the Sculpture Park and includes many more sculptures by famous artisits) which I passed yesterday.  Today, I looked at each sculpture reading about the artist and the name of the piece, and I climbed the Cascade Gardens.  From the bottom of the gardens, one seems lots of steps and lots of hedges.  But as a person climbs and looks down, there are flower gardens within areas surrounded by the hedges.  So the great view is from on top looking down rather than from the bottom looking up. 

There are free escalators that can be taken inside the structure of the Cascade Gardens, but I chose to climb.  And at the top, I continued my climb further to the Soviet monument to the victory in WWII over Germany and the Axis Powers.  It's a tall monument at the very top of one of the hills here in Yerevan.  From it, I had a great view over the city and to Mount Ararat in the distance.  Unfortunately, there was a haze today, so only the outline of the mountain could be seen rather than a clear view of it.  While up there, I also noted that I was higher than any building in the center of Yerevan.  My guess is that I had climbed the equivalent of a 40-story building.  And then I walked back down!

From there, I walked westward along Baghramyan Avenue--uphill all the way!  It's lined with fancy buildings.  At the end of it was a major traffic intersection where there had been a large Soviet department store.  It is no longer there.  But the area is filled with lots of small merchants offering everything necessary for residents of the neighborhood. 

I took the metro back to town from there.  I wanted to see what it is like.  The stations are nice and clean with lots of white marble walls.  But few signs are in English, and there are no English announcements either.  That made it hard to know where I was as the train made each stop.  I got off at Republic Square thinking I was probably at Freedom Square.  Anyway, I figured out where I was and how to get back to my apartment from there.

This evening, I'm staying inside.  I've already made dinner of pasta with an Armenian tomato-pepper-garlic sauce and had some Armenian wine.  Now I will read more in my novel.  A nice discovery today is that I have one more novel in my bags.  I thought I was reading the last one and was trying to spread out the experience.  Now I can finish this one and start the other!