21 February 2010
Trying to Get Home
02/25/10 03:11
Big snow scheduled today for the east coast. I hope they don’t cancel my flight. I’m in London with a bad cold and I don’t particularly like London, so I hope I can get home today. I was just put on a trip to Hyderabad in a little over a week, and I would love to spend a few days at home before I have to go out again.
We’ll see how this all works out, but if I manage to get on a plane, here’s a happy little song I’ll be humming on the flight home
We’ll see how this all works out, but if I manage to get on a plane, here’s a happy little song I’ll be humming on the flight home
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Blue Skies in Yerevan
02/21/10 02:11
There is an old Soviet viewing platform on top of a hill overlooking Yerevan, and on a clear day you can see Mount Ararat behind the city from it. A rich Armenian-American donated a few hundred million to create a combined art gallery and staircase leading up to it. It is open, but still under construction
The views from the top are pretty impressive, even on a cloudy day
I had not seen blue sky since leaving Washington, it had been especially dreary on the weekends
Today everything is reverting to gray again, but yesterday was a magnificent, warm, azure, spring-like day. I spent a lot of time outdoors, starting with the huge outdoor market, which is conveniently located right across Republic Square from our hotel.
Anything that can possibly be sold is there
If you need auto parts, old radios, used books, tools, clothes, linens, tchotchkes, or antiques, this is the place to go. And they absolutely love Americans here. And the street food, especially the breads... Chomp!
I took my obligatory Metro ride
The escalators are just like in Moscow, incredibly steep and fast, and a dour old woman sitting in a booth at the bottom for some reason. You literally get thrown off of the escalator at the bottom
I got off at a random stop and checked out the neighborhood
Then I went back and walked around downtown for a couple of hours.
I finally saw Mount Ararat, which is much more imposing than this picture suggests
This picture was taken from my hotel balcony (while chatting on the phone with the Delightful Miss Janet). They told me that there was a good view from the balcony, but like I said, it had been gray and dreary up until yesterday. The mountain is about 15 miles away in Turkey, and Iran is another 5 miles or so beyond that.
Nothing like having beer and khinkali in a Georgian restaurant in Armenia listening to a guy belt out Soviet era folk songs about dyavuotchkas and old Lyeningrada and the Volga
Well, this is my last free day here, so I think I’m gonna head out and find some stuff to look at.
Cheers
The views from the top are pretty impressive, even on a cloudy day
I had not seen blue sky since leaving Washington, it had been especially dreary on the weekends
Today everything is reverting to gray again, but yesterday was a magnificent, warm, azure, spring-like day. I spent a lot of time outdoors, starting with the huge outdoor market, which is conveniently located right across Republic Square from our hotel.
Anything that can possibly be sold is there
If you need auto parts, old radios, used books, tools, clothes, linens, tchotchkes, or antiques, this is the place to go. And they absolutely love Americans here. And the street food, especially the breads... Chomp!
I took my obligatory Metro ride
The escalators are just like in Moscow, incredibly steep and fast, and a dour old woman sitting in a booth at the bottom for some reason. You literally get thrown off of the escalator at the bottom
I got off at a random stop and checked out the neighborhood
Then I went back and walked around downtown for a couple of hours.
I finally saw Mount Ararat, which is much more imposing than this picture suggests
This picture was taken from my hotel balcony (while chatting on the phone with the Delightful Miss Janet). They told me that there was a good view from the balcony, but like I said, it had been gray and dreary up until yesterday. The mountain is about 15 miles away in Turkey, and Iran is another 5 miles or so beyond that.
Nothing like having beer and khinkali in a Georgian restaurant in Armenia listening to a guy belt out Soviet era folk songs about dyavuotchkas and old Lyeningrada and the Volga
Well, this is my last free day here, so I think I’m gonna head out and find some stuff to look at.
Cheers