Today we spent over 5 hours on the road. We left Yerevan at 9:45 with a designated driver by the name of Misha. Misha is a chubby guy with a Mercedes that's not too old (maybe 10-15 y/o), well maintained, with dark windows (shame) that has good hold of the road (important). The drive is nearly 300km of which about 200 or so are on curvy mountainous roads.
The Mercedes! (guy is not Misha)
Misha has been to Tbilisi multiple times, as the evidence shows:
Along the way we stopped for gas (literally gas, not petrol) a couple of times. And I have found my next vehicle:
My next vehicle
We stopped along the way in two spots:
1. Sevan Lake (2000m altitude, 105km circumference, cold weather)
Misha and Sharon
2. A small village by name of Dilijan that has a small pond and an interesting coffee place, with chambers whose floors are below water level. Pretty cool.
Cool coffee place in Dilijan
The border crossing to Georgia struck me as somewhat strange due to the fact that there were barely any people crossing. One would have expected a lot more traffic from a country (Armenia) that has open borders just on two ends. I had found this strange when we drove to Armenia too.
Azerbaijan (where the water is)
Misha is an interesting driver. Typically, he drives at least 100kph in those curvy mountain roads, and passes cars with complete disregard to continuous white lines (as is the way of the land around here). Yet, he is extremely cautious in the presence of Police. For example, as we passed by a police car, he suddenly drove 40, the police overtook us, he continued to drive 40 until the police found some fish. Then he continued with his normal speed of 130…
Btw, Misha claimed that alone he does this in 3 hours. I doubt it, since all of our stops didn't amount to more than 1 hour. Still, we was an hour faster than the drive to Yerevan.
Anyway, we arrived in Tbilisi at 15:00 (Ata Hotel again), and didn't do much for the rest of the day, other then getting some food.
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