Tourist Day

Kars
August 11th

Loaded the bikes into our small van that Teresa and Aman will drive to Ankara over then next two days. Four of the bikes, including mine, did not fit in, so they will travel on the bus to Ankara with us tomorrow.

Paid about US$500 for the group flight from Ankara to Baku. There will be extra charges for our bikes and heavy luggage too, so this is going to be an expensive detour.

Given the break, I've sent my parents a wish list of spare bike parts that I'm hoping they can send to me in Baku. Poor mom and dad are now scrambling around trying to find these somewhat obscure pieces. It looks like my dad will end up driving to a Toronto bike shop, which is the only place that keeps them all in stock. What nice parents I have.

Spent the rest of the day playing tourist. Took a bus to the medieval city of Ani, which was the capital of Armenia for several hundred years. Its now a large dusty site with several old ruins on the Turkish side of the Armenian border, 45km from Kars.

The Ani site:

You could walk anywhere you liked on the site:


Present day Armenia is on the other side of the river/canyon:

Interesting caves in the canyon walls: