Armenia

I spent about 10 days in Armenia in Summer 2016.  Not sure why it's taken so long to publish the below - as you can see, it didn't take long to write.

I'd previously been hanging out in Georgia so got to the border and then was driven to the capital Yerevan by one of the office drivers.  We didn't share a word of a common language, but he gave me the most delicious hot cheese sandwich i have ever had so I thanked him by bowing in a kind of Japanese way.  On the way we passed Lake Sevan which looked cold.

Yerevan has an array of attractions for the lazy traveller, all within half a mile of each other.  Best is the Cafesjian Art Centre (photos below).

Some of the Cafesjian Centre's wildlife

Another indigenous Cafesjian species

The Armenian Genocide monument and museum is a couple of miles out of town, is very moving and is rather hard to make any jokes about so i'll move on.

Toasting marshmallows not encouraged

This charming fellow is not remembered fondly by the Armenians

The Museum of Art has some excellent items but the way around is very badly signposted so I kept walking into closets, ladies lavatories and so on and had to be retrieved and set back on the right path by museum attendants.

The historical museum has all sorts of weird stuff, including an object purported to be the world's oldest shoe which interestingly was in almost the exact shape of my Nike Tiempo astroturf football boots.

The Armenians are on very bad terms with most of their neighbours, most notably the Turkish (genocide) and the Azerbaijanis (war at the moment, sort of).  I tried to discuss the Kurds with one of them, thinking he might see them as a similarly oppressed people, and it turns out that the Armenians hate the Kurds as much as anyone else for their part in the genocide - supposedly the Turkish tricked them into carrying most of it out.

Mount Ararat loom over the city like somewhere Noah might have beached an ark.  Unbelievably, I don't seem to have a single photo of the only thing anyone seems to take a photo of in Yerevan, but you can look a photo of it up online.

This chap clearly hasn't been to the genocide museum lately

The Cairo Metro

I wrote this post a little over a year ago and didn't publish it for some reason.  I hope that publishing it now will buy me some time to write the next one.

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Every day I travel to work on the underground, which is marvellous.

There are often tradesman hawking their wares, and the weary commuter can choose from an array of delights, including beard-trimmers, classroom sets, hotel coffee sachets, inflatable Spongebobs and spinning tops (complete with full demonstration).

People are very generous with each other and will give up their seats for anyone who looks in need.  When someone stands up and gets off, those sitting either side will select the oldest or most infirm looking person left standing up and yank them onto the seat.  People are also happy to catch englishmen if they fall over when the train brakes suddenly.

A curious feature of the system is that the doors only stay open for a fixed length of time, and will shut suddenly while people are getting on and off.  Therefore positioning yourself by the door and packing down like the All Blacks front row are necessary to ensure that your whole body makes it off and not, say, just your head and one arm.

There are two ladies only carriages on every train, which I've found a great place to meet women (joke).

A metro ticket costs the equivalent of around ten American cents (hard to calculate as the Egyptian pound can't make up its mind how much it is worth).  You need to put your ticket in the barrier to get onto the platform, and when you leave the station after your journey you have to hand it to an official, who will then put it directly in the bin.  Having this system has solved Egypt's problem of what to do with soldiers when you have an enormous army but sadly no reason to invade Israel.

Doubtful whether I'll be able to get on this train