Melby's Travels

FEB 1 NATIONAL GALLERY OF ARMENIA The permanent collection of the museum was closed for renovation, so only a few exhibits were open. The artists in the Impressionist exhibit used the same techniques as European Impressionists, except some of their subjects were Armenian. I really liked these two paintings below by Arakelian because of the movement in the paintings. Also The one of the left is cool because it depicts a oleaster tree, which doesn't look that big in photos. However, in this painting, the tree looks quite grand. Another artist that stood out to me is the sculptor Gyurjian. his style is one I've never seen before. His figures are generally quite slender. For instance, his depiction of Jesus Christ is much thinner and less muscular than what I'm used to. Same with his angels. Also, the combination of curvature joined sharply with lines is unlike the Roman / Greek sculpture I'm used to. The closest I've seen before are Egyptian carvings. However, Gyurjian...

JAN 30 In the morning, I hung out with Joe and Melissa.  ST. GREGORY'S CATHEDRAL This church was huge! The smooth stone definitely made it feel extra monumental. No pictures were allowed inside. BAKERY We visited a bakery near St. Gregory's church that basically doesn't show up on Google. Potato pastry had some herbs and salty sheep's milk cheese. Quite good! A cat kept meowing at us outside the bakery. GUM MARKET We revisited GUM Market - I didn't get much better at bargaining but I learned a little bit while watching Melissa. Got some dried pears and juicy dried apricots with pits. Lots of lavash! LAHMAJUN GAIDZ Arabic Lahmajun - beef, onions, pomegranate molasses, warm spices. pomegranate molasses added sweetness and tang! GATA CAKES & BAKERY Another type of gata! This one was basically like soft sweet bread - not much gluten. The filling had relatively coarse sugar! OPERA The opera house itself is quite grand, but the audience was rather normally dressed. At...

For breakfast, I had gata from the Tumanyan St Bakery. Looks like the top crust was added on top separately, hence the gap between the top crust and the filling. Anyway, quite tasty - the sour cherries, apricots, and walnuts all had good flavor. Then I went to Hayk's Coffee Roasters which focuses on sourcing quality coffee beans. I had their Armenian coffee 100% Arabica version (they also had a 100% Robusta version for the caffeine?). When the coffee was hot, I felt a bit of the fine coffee grounds on my tongue but they later settled (after about an hour?) There was a toasty flavor, but not too bitter especially when I didn't drink any of the grounds. For lunch, I dined at Rehan which was pretty upscale since it was near the Cascade. I had the Fishne Kebab, which consisted of bread, lamb meatballs, and sour cherry sauce. The lamb meatballs reminded me of Swedish meatballs - probably because they had allspice and/or nutmeg in them. The sour cherry sauce was pretty pungent, but i...