[ Autumn, 2005 ] Most of the destinations in Armenian tour were churches and monasteries.
But each one stands in a special place and I never got tired of it.
This Noravank monastery is located in a valley surrounded by rock mountains with red soils.
I remember that it was very beautiful when I looked up the monastery to see the building in the colourful surroundings.
There is a two-story church here and a lot of my tour members went up the steep staircase, but I did not, as I am a bit frightened of the height.
Armenia has a lot of earthquakes,too and traditionally they have been building houses with some wedge shaped bends so that the damage would be minimum.
Apparently they still do this as we saw the same bends in a new church.
Another thing we learned was that when someone payed tribute to a church, they carved a cross on the outside wall of the church.
I also vaguely remember that one of the churches here was built for the memory of someone’s brother and it is designed so that every year on the brother’s birthday, the sunbeam would show up the gravestone.
