Armenia

Armenia caught me off guard in the best way. I'd come expecting old churches and apricot trees, and I got both — but what I didn't expect was how raw and quiet everything felt. At Odzun and Haghpat, the pink tuff stone just sits there on the hillside, ancient and unfussy, with the Debed Canyon dropping away behind it and big clouds rolling in from the north. Standing inside those arches, the air smells like damp grass and old stone.

The drive through Lori Province was something else — winding roads, sudden drops into green gorges, Soviet war monuments appearing out of nowhere beside a wheat field. That MiG jet under its concrete canopy near Alaverdi felt like a time capsule nobody had touched in thirty years. Armenia carries its Soviet chapter openly; it doesn't hide it or rush past it.

Yerevan's Vernissage market on a weekend afternoon was where everything loosened up — old rubles, Chinese jiao, Bangladeshi taka all clipped side by side on a blanket, waiting for someone to take them home. And then there's the brandy. Armenian brandy is not a tourist gimmick; it's genuinely something the country is proud of, and rightly so. A 3-year V.S. poured in a bare cafe with iron chairs and marble floors tastes exactly like the place feels — straightforward, a little serious, worth your full attention.