“Armenia 🇦🇲 ~Still Here in our Winter Wonderland and It’s Story Time!”

• December 30, 2020
• By Pen
• 2 Comments

We thought we would have been moving on by now, to new locations in Armenia, because we have only seen about half of what we came to see, but we just aren’t motivated to do so. The longer we stay at this no-name hotel and restaurant, the more we like it! We have come to realize from our continual travel, the longer we stay in one place, the more we get to immerse ourselves in the culture, the more we understand about the people, and the greater part is getting to really enjoy some good local traditional foods! I will post a pretty interesting New Years blog post about more on this.

We continue to be the only guests at the hotel, so we have a whole top floor to ourselves. It’s very peaceful, private, and quiet, and hard to give up; so is the $6 a night price! We are planning two; three-month visits in Europe in the new year. (God willing) so its always good to have a chance to save some coin. But, the restaurant has their regular customers, on occasion. Even on Christmas Day, they had other diners, so we didn’t feel guilty for somebody having to cook on Christmas just for us. The weather has been sunny and beautiful, so we are just enjoying our surroundings very much. We are in a rural area and not in a town or city. Our Holiday destination is ending up to being mighty good!

Yesterday, we drove into Gyumri (about 20 miles round trip) to go to the grocery store, pharmacy and to wash the car. It was great to be out again. I had also collected many left-over food items and found more hungry dogs to feed.
We have decided to stay in this hotel, till after the New Year, just to make sure we can find open places for lodging, when we leave. Holidays and full-time travel is tricky on years without a pandemic. We are also taking full advantage of the coziness of our digs, plenty of time to cuddle, read, book-write, watch documentaries or movies, and nap. We just feel so happy right now, living in the moment.

Hopefully after the new year, we will get to launch a new facelift to this website. Much work has gone into this phase, so it’s nice to have the downtime to finish! But, tomorrow we will take a full-day road trip to try to see two sites. (five hours, just in drive time; round trip). We love sightseeing and showing you interesting places, so we are excited. With the sunny weather, and no new snow, it does seem to help the roads clear in many places. It’s still 1-7 degrees at night and 30-34 degrees during the day, though.

In other news, A few days ago, out of the blue, I was contacted by one of the tour operators from back when we were in Egypt and toured the Nile, by boat. If you are new to following us; back in January and February, 2020, we made our second trip to Egypt. Our focus was a boat tour from Luxor to Aswan, and another boat tour from Aswan back to Luxor. Both tour companies were a disappointment, and the result of a broken down boat for 12 hours, was included in the complaint. BUT, the biggest disappointment was FINALLY making it to Aswan, so we could depart the boat by vehicle at 4:00AM to go to our much anticipated site of the Abu Simbel Temples next to the Sudan border. We were so excited!…. only, our guide and driver did not show up! A staff member from the boat was nice enough to contact the tour guide for us, because we had no signal while on the Nile, and we were told “I don’t feel like coming!” from the guide! WTH! No guide and no vehicle out in the middle of nowhere. The reason for the early departure was because of drive time and tour time, AND to be able to return to the boat, before it disembarked. Aside from being really ticked off, we missed the main reason for returning to Egypt for this second visit! Anyway, the purpose for the tour company contacting me was; he wanted me to delete my Trip Advisor review, because it was not favorable. I told him I could not do that. I spoke the truth, and hoped to spare others from being as disappointed as us. We do not take spending money on tours, lightly. I asked for a partial refund, after returning to Luxor, and because I was not taken seriously for my complaint, and got zilch, I felt compelled to post my review. I do reviews when we have an excellent experience, or a fail. Anything in between is not noted, if it’s acceptable to us. It all began when purchasing our tour through Viator, only to learn after we arrived in Egypt, the tour companies and my contacts did not know what Viator even was. How that can be, when they advertised through Viator, is beyond me. We could not find our return boat at the designated port, and when we did, they were not expecting us! My confirmation information from Viator meant nothing to them. We were told we could pay for the boat tour, as they did have room. WTH again! We had already pre-paid!
We have done so many tours out in the world. Some are better than others, but we never had quite the fail as we did in Egypt, on the Nile River boat tours. Sorry-not sorry, my Trip Advisor review remains.

All that being said. We would never discourage anybody from going to Egypt. It is a mystical ancient place, and is well worth the two trips we made. (we went to Cairo, and Giza for the Pyramids and Sphinx on our first trip) AMAZING!. Even though the Nile Cruises were not up to snuff, we visited many ancient sites and other temples while on our second trip to Egypt. In fact, you can go to our “archives” at the bottom of our first page, on this blog website, by clicking on Africa, and then on Egypt; click on “older posts” at the bottom of the pages as you scroll along to see photos with read historical facts from our visit. ALL we did get to see was incredible! We love Egypt, but do be aware of the Nile Boat tours. There was not a lot of reviews to go by, when I was researching. I also learned booked tours are bought by other tour companies, so they work separate from the boat owners. This explains so much on why all the confusion. Take note, the Nile River is not the only way to get to Aswan. If we were to plan again, we would skip the boat tour on the Nile and go by car along the Nile to see the many ancient sites.

On a happier note, our wonderful daughter shipped me two flat-rate boxes from American to Armenia with some much needed items, and the time-frame was indicated at 7-10 days for delivery. However, the postal clerk in America added; “but it is Armenia.” 😬 Hmmm, trying to take that with a grain of salt. We still have no neighboring country borders open, so here we will remain for awhile, just as we anticipated we would. Winter and COVID19 do not make a good match, so we must adjust our dreams accordingly. I’m sure we are not the only ones looking forward to Spring, and the hope of life opens up again. In the meantime, we always find ourselves feeling grateful for so many things that are going right, during these challenging times!