“No pit” this is what Rose asked about the eggs. It is one of her favorite phrases on the trips. She had learned to successfully eat olives, cherries, other “random” fruits, and stone fruits with pits. She now asks about a lot of food, including eggs apparently, if it contains a pit. We went out for breakfast. A lot of places were open at 8am, but our first choice Lebanese place did not appear to have anything Archer would like. Ended up at a fancy coffee shop. I have declared my grumps are going away. Yerevan has a lot of water fountains too. I read 1500. While Rose was getting a drink, 4 people stoped by for a quick sip at this 7 person fountain. We are wandering the city our first morning here. “Me Moana”Archer helped Rose up The question was, would 572 stairs take any energy out of the kids. Walking here we discovered two private playgrounds, but no public ones. “My map did it” Archer successfully lead us up the steps to the obelisk. I think he map was on his imaginary wrist communicator. I did not ask too many questions. We crossed the road to the amusement park which is a lot like the one in Tbilisi. It was too early for it to be really going yet. More rides on this one, but the atmosphere in the Tbilisi one was a little cooler. No giant cups of mulled wine that we discovered yet. Don’t think we will make it to the circus. Then we bought an overpriced water and went to Victory Park. A park with that name by the USSR proudly displays a lot of old Russian military equipment which Archer and I got odd satisfaction from seeing. S-75, MIG-15, T-34, and more. I don’t climb on the equipment for selfies like others.We discovered supervised play structures at restaurants. This one cost $3/hour and included a bounce house. Archer decided he wanted to whine at the table with us (he was probably hangry) and Rose just wanted to play. The food was good, maybe not the best ever, but lunch was peaceful which is not every meal. Katy and Rose went back to nap. Archer got another milkshake and I got a beer. We then went to what people said was like the Tbilisi flea market, but it was just set stalls selling tourist “stuff”. Archer spent $2.50 on a crystal necklace. “I knew it, my magic crystal is real, it led us to the fair” … “My dream came through”Rose “me up high”. With the $1.10. It didn’t break. Archer rode on it too. It turns out his crystal has real super powers. One of them being bravery and after traveling a month Archer is now able to ride a kiddie ride without a parent going on it. WIN. “You just have to rub it to go up and down”Rose get yelled at in Russian and Armenian for rocking her swing. Her response was to do no hands. She didn’t fall out.We then found the best playground in Armenia (per me with a small sample size, but I’m right). We ate at a Punjabi restaurant next door. We were warned that dinner would be 20-30 minutes since they cooked everything from scratch. We might have been their only customer for the family that ran it that night. I made the suspect decision of ordering 1 of the 3 meat dishes (chicken) at the slow restaurant that it appeared the family that ran it was vegetarian. It didn’t come back to bite me in the butt. No options of spice level, Katy ordered some riata. We discovered the music dancing fountain near our hotel which started at 8p on the walk back. Archer did some amazing dancing and conducting.Day 2, Archer had arranged all of his toys on the second bed in his room. Rose has a separate room, more sleep for the kids I think.
It was raining. We got breakfast, went to the grocery store, and went to go to the museum of illusions, but it turned out that all the guides were busy with a school group so we couldn’t go in. We then had some frustration with what to do.
Our first restaurant with a playroom was having a birthday party? In the playroom and it wasn’t available until 3p. We could find very little information online, but we took Rose to a supervised play room and we went to lunch. I had to go back once, but Rose did not want to leave when it was time to take her to nap.
Archer ate most of the hamburger that was the size of his head. His first one in over a month. I had the best beer I had in Yerevan at the brewery.
Archer and I went in search of ice cream. Katy and Rose went to nap. We succeeded after walking a mile. It was yummy. We made it back to the apartment exactly when we said we would be back and Katy went to get her nails done. Rose was woken up at 4:25p and we went out to explore. We went to Zazaland which turned out to be a rather lame amusement park, but the kids still enjoyed it. Rose did not get yelled at on the swings. At the end the swipe machine took double the amount for a $0.75 ride so their response was to let both kids ride a $1.50 ride, I’ll take it.
We spent two more days in Yerevan after this and then concluded our trip (I am typing this a week after we left) by flying Yerevan-Paris-Chicago. We spent the night in Chicago and took an early flight back to Colorado. Rose did not start the Paris-Chicago flight making any friends by screaming for 10 minutes when we buckled her seatbelt, but she eventually relaxed and took a nap. Archer refused to give up any movie time on the flight and fell asleep with <5 minutes left on the flight. About a week later we are all pretty much back to normal. Rose has needed many a days of big sleeps to catch up on a month of less sleep than she is used to.
WE HAD A GREAT TRIP.
(a wrap-up, random blog will be coming as the conclusion)
Far Flung Forays 