Week 3, Thursday - sometimes meals are difficult

Today dawned, if not sunny, at least without a feel of rain and it was much warmer. Leaving the hotel it felt wonderful to be outside. Our destination was the National Gallery of Armenia but first a breakfast spot needed to be found.

We first stopped at Marco Polo, only to discover that its kitchen was not yet open. Evidently only coffee and tea were being served. So we kept going up Abovyan Street to the tried and true Artbridge. I had French Toast and Neil had pancakes and a French Press. After all the years of my telling him how good French Press coffee is, he finally became convinced on this trip.

We finished breakfast and got to the gallery just at 11:00 which was its opening time. The gallery is located at Republic Square and occupies the top five floors of the building with the State History Museum taking the bottom two floors.

After obtaining our tickets we were ushered to a tiny elevator and taken to the top floor. Evidently the gallery is to be done top to bottom. Unfortunately we only had time to do the top three floors before Neil needed to leave for the bank. But those three floors were filled with many wonders, mostly of the European school – Jordeans III, di Lorenzo, Boudin, Tintoretto, van Goyen – to name the ones I remember. However it was the fifth floor where the Armenian painters were housed that I enjoyed the most. I had no prior knowledge of these artists and it was a joy to discover them. I particularly enjoyed Aivasovsky's seascapes and another fellow whose name escapes me (perhaps because both his first and last names were very long and very unpronounceable, at least to this Westerner). His paintings were in a wide array of styles. This is something that always amazes me, an artist who can switch styles at will.  Unfortunate that our time here was so short.

Back at the hotel and Neil heads off to the bank. There has been an exciting change at the hotel, since yesterday there has been wifi throughout the complex. Prior to this there was wifi in the lobby and ethernet in the rooms. That meant I had to go to the lobby to update my podcasts and newspapers on my Droid and when both of us were in the room only one could be online at a time. Too bad we didn't have this for the whole visit, still I'll be happy for whatever I get.

For our final 'duo' dinner we decided to go back to the Lebanese restaurant we had been to a couple of times. Once there we put in our order, got our drinks, and sat for a very long time with nothing further coming. Finally we decided to leave and Neil went to take care of our bill. Evidently our order had been lost and our meal would be coming shortly. Neil declined and we left. At least we got our drinks free.

We ended up having that tasty Diavalo pizza back at the hotel. Not what we were planning but enjoyable nonetheless.