Armenia: Yerevan, Dilijan, Goris and Tatev

1. Day 1: Arrive in Yerevan

   Zvartnots International Airport to your hotel in Yerevan, then the Cascade

   • Drive about 18 min
   • Welcome dinner
   • Stay in Yerevan
   Day 1 details

   Fly into Zvartnots International Airport (EVN), about 12 km west of the centre. Many flights into Yerevan land late at night or in the early hours, so a driver meets every guest's flight on day 1, whatever the time, and takes you to a central hotel within walking distance of Republic Square. To make the evening briefing, plan to land by about 4 pm. At 6 pm your See Sight Tours guide, who stays with you all week, meets the group to talk through the route, the long road south, what to wear in churches and how the days are paced. Then we walk up to the Cascade, a white stone stairway of terraces, fountains and sculptures, as the evening light falls on the city, and on a clear evening Mount Ararat stands over the rooftops. Dinner is together nearby: Armenian dishes to share, from herbs, cheeses and lavash to grilled khorovats.

   Included

   • Pick-up at Zvartnots International Airport (EVN), at any time
   • Welcome briefing with your guide
   • Evening walk to the Cascade
   • Welcome dinner

   Free time: Free until the 6 pm briefing

   Activity: Escalators inside the Cascade spare you the outdoor steps.

   

2. Day 2: Yerevan: memorial, manuscripts and brandy

   Tsitsernakaberd, the Matenadaran, Republic Square, then a brandy cellar in the evening

   • Drive about 30 min
   • Breakfast
   • Stay in Yerevan
   Day 2 details

   We open the day at 9 am at Tsitsernakaberd, the memorial to the victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, on a hill above the city: an eternal flame inside a ring of leaning basalt slabs. The museum beside it follows when it opens. It is a quiet, serious morning, and your guide gives it time. Then the Matenadaran, the institute of ancient manuscripts, with illuminated gospels and early texts in the alphabet Mesrop Mashtots created in the early 5th century. We walk down Mashtots Avenue and Northern Avenue to Republic Square, its government buildings in pink and ochre tuff stone, finishing in the early afternoon. Both museums close one or two days a week, so on some departures we swap the order of the day's visits around those closing days. The afternoon is free: the History Museum of Armenia on the square, the GUM market for dried fruit and sujukh, or the Vernissage market at weekends. At about 6 pm we meet again for a guided visit and tasting in the cellars of one of Yerevan's historic brandy houses, among barrels laid down for decades. Dinner tonight is your own.

   Included

   • Tsitsernakaberd memorial and the Armenian Genocide Museum with your guide
   • The Matenadaran
   • Walk to Republic Square with your guide
   • Brandy cellar visit and tasting

   Easier option: We drive between the memorial, the Matenadaran and the square if you would rather not walk.

   Free time: Afternoon free; dinner on your own

   Activity: Both museums have weekly closing days and set opening hours; we order day 2 around them and confirm the order with your final itinerary.

   

3. Day 3: Geghard, Garni and Lake Sevan

   Yerevan to Geghard Monastery and Garni Temple, then Sevanavank on Lake Sevan and Dilijan

   • Drive about 3.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Dilijan
   Day 3 details

   We leave Yerevan at 8 am to reach Geghard at about 9, ahead of the day tours. The monastery sits at the head of the Azat Valley and is partly cut into the cliff: some chapels are carved out of the living rock, and a spring still runs in one. Geghard and the upper Azat Valley are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Then twenty minutes down the valley to Garni, a Greco-Roman temple of the 1st century AD on a promontory above the gorge, rebuilt in the 1970s from its fallen stones. Lunch is with a family in Garni village, where you watch, and try, lavash being slapped onto the wall of a tonir, the clay oven sunk in the floor. In the afternoon we drive about an hour and a half north to Lake Sevan, at about 1,900 m, and climb to Sevanavank, two small 9th-century churches on a peninsula above the water. Then about forty minutes through the Dilijan tunnel to Dilijan, with the evening free.

   Included

   • Geghard Monastery with your guide
   • Garni Temple entry
   • Lavash baking and lunch with a family in Garni
   • Sevanavank on Lake Sevan

   Easier option: Stay at the foot of the Sevanavank steps and walk the shore while the group climbs.

   More active option: Walk down into the Garni gorge to the Symphony of Stones, cliffs of hexagonal basalt columns, about 3 km with about 100 m of descent and climb, while the van waits below.

   Free time: Evening free in Dilijan

   Activity: The steps to Sevanavank are short but steep; Lake Sevan is cool and windy even in summer.

   

4. Day 4: South over the Selim Pass to Goris

   Dilijan along Lake Sevan to Noratus, over the Selim Pass, then through Vayk and Sisian to Goris

   • Drive about 6 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Goris
   Day 4 details

   The longest drive of the week, about 310 km and five and a half to six hours at the wheel, because only one road links the north of Armenia with Syunik in the south; it is the price of two nights in Goris. We leave at 8:30 am after a short walk on Dilijan's Sharambeyan Street, and break the day into parts. First the west shore of Lake Sevan to Noratus, a field of hundreds of carved stone crosses, khachkars, some nearly a thousand years old. Then over the Selim Pass at about 2,410 m, where a stone caravanserai built in 1332 sheltered travellers on the Silk Road; step inside its dark, pillared hall. Lunch is sit-down, on the way down into the Vayots Dzor valley. The afternoon runs through Vayk and over the Vorotan Pass to Sisian and the green plateau of Syunik. We reach Goris, a town of stone houses in a bowl of hills, around 6 pm, with a free evening.

   Included

   • Sharambeyan Street in Dilijan
   • The Noratus khachkar field with your guide
   • Selim Caravanserai on the Selim Pass
   • Sit-down lunch in Vayots Dzor

   Free time: Evening free in Goris

   Activity: The one day over the four-hour driving cap, about 5.5 to 6 hours at the wheel; it is broken by Noratus, the caravanserai, a sit-down lunch and a coffee stop near Sisian. Exact timings are confirmed by our driver.

   

5. Day 5: Wings of Tatev and Khndzoresk

   Goris to Halidzor, the cable car to Tatev Monastery, then Khndzoresk and back to Goris

   • Drive about 1.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Goris
   Day 5 details

   A day in Syunik without a hotel change. We drive about half an hour to Halidzor and take one of the first Wings of Tatev cars of the morning: about 5.7 km of cable across the Vorotan gorge, high above the river, in around twelve minutes. Tatev Monastery stands on the edge of the gorge at the far end, built in the 9th and 10th centuries and for centuries a university and seat of bishops. Inside the walls, look for the Gavazan, a stone column on a hinge that rocks when pushed. Lunch is in Tatev village, then back across on the cable car. In the afternoon we drive to Khndzoresk, where people lived in houses cut into the soft rock of a ravine until the 1950s; a swinging footbridge crosses the gorge to the old village. We are back in Goris by about 4 pm, with the rest of the day free to walk its streets of stone houses.

   Included

   • Wings of Tatev cable car, return
   • Tatev Monastery with your guide
   • Lunch in Tatev village
   • Khndzoresk cave village and its swinging bridge

   Easier option: See Khndzoresk from the viewpoint at the top of the ravine and wait at the café while the group walks down.

   More active option: Walk down into old Khndzoresk, across the swinging bridge and among the cave houses, then climb back up: about 1 to 1.5 hours with a steep path.

   Free time: Late afternoon and evening free in Goris

   Activity: If wind stops the cable car, we drive up to Tatev by road, about an hour each way from Goris.

6. Day 6: Zorats Karer, Areni wine and Noravank

   Goris to Zorats Karer near Sisian, Areni and the Areni-1 cave, Noravank, then Yerevan

   • Drive about 4.5 h
   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Yerevan
   Day 6 details

   We leave Goris at 8:30 am and drive about 45 minutes to Zorats Karer, near Sisian: more than two hundred standing stones on a grassy ridge, some pierced with round holes, whose age and purpose are still argued over. Then about two hours back over the Vorotan Pass into Vayots Dzor to Areni, where in 2007 to 2010 archaeologists found a leather shoe about 5,500 years old and the remains of a winery about 6,100 years old in a cave above the river. We visit the cave, then sit down to lunch at a family winery in Areni with a tasting of wine from the local areni grape. In the afternoon, a few minutes up a narrow red-walled gorge, Noravank, a 13th-century monastery whose carved church facade takes the low sun. Then about an hour and a half to Yerevan, to the same hotel as nights 1 and 2 by about 6 pm, and a farewell dinner together.

   Included

   • Zorats Karer with your guide
   • The Areni-1 cave
   • Winery lunch and tasting in Areni
   • Noravank Monastery
   • Farewell dinner in Yerevan

   Easier option: Stay by the van at the Areni-1 cave, which has a short climb on steps to the entrance.

   More active option: Walk the ridge path around the whole stone circle at Zorats Karer while the group sees the central stones.

   Activity: About four and a half hours of driving, broken by Zorats Karer, the cave, a winery lunch and Noravank.

   

7. Day 7: Departure from Yerevan

   Yerevan to Zvartnots International Airport

   • Drive about 18 min
   • Breakfast
   Day 7 details

   There are no activities planned today, so you leave whenever your flight does. Many flights from Zvartnots International Airport (EVN), about 12 km west of the centre, depart in the early hours or early morning, and we drive you to the airport at whatever time your flight needs; your guide checks the time with you the evening before. If you fly later in the day, leave your bags at the hotel after check-out and use the morning: the History Museum of Armenia on Republic Square, the Vernissage market if it is a weekend, or a last coffee on Northern Avenue. The ruins of the 7th-century Zvartnots Cathedral, part of a UNESCO listing with Echmiadzin, stand beside the airport road; with a flight after midday we can stop there for half an hour. Book a flight that suits the transfer time you prefer. If you would like more days, ask us for extra nights in Yerevan or our Georgia and Armenia trip.

   Included

   • Drop-off at Zvartnots International Airport (EVN), at any time

   Free time: Free until your airport transfer

   Activity: Any flight time works; for the Zvartnots Cathedral stop, book a flight after midday.

Wildlife and weather: We run from May to October. May and June bring green hills and wildflowers in Syunik; September and October bring the grape harvest around Areni and golden forests around Dilijan. July and August are hot in Yerevan, so we sightsee in the mornings there, while Dilijan, Lake Sevan and Goris stay cooler. The high passes on the road south can see snow outside these months.

• Yerevan2 nights
• Dilijan1 night
• Goris2 nights
• Yerevan1 night