We wanted to book a driver for a three day tour from Yerevan to the south of Armenia then back up by lake Sevan and on up to Tbilisi in... read more Georgia. We got in touch with Jan Armenia and they were extremely helpful in arranging a bespoke itinerary for us and advising on how to structure the days to fit in everything we wanted. They could not have been more helpful.

When it came to the actual trip, we had one driver for the first few days who spoke a little English - plenty enough to communicate and was generally quite pleasant. For the third day we had a different driver who spoke no English, but did use a translation app on his phone which worked well enough.

We were told we would be given free sim cards with free data, however this never worked, and the company could have done a bit more to make sure that was working. On the first few days this wasn't a big problem as the car had free wifi we could use, however this wasn't available in the car on the third day, which was a bit disappointing, and meant we had no internet access (if we had known this was the case we could have looked things up beforehand however because we didn't know, and assumed we could look things up on the way, this wasn't ideal).

Our driver on the third day also turned up about one hour late, then at the end of the day in Tbilisi he had typed the hotel location wrong and in the end took us about 10 miles out of the city. With the lack of internet access (which we were supposed to have) and the fact that the driver spoke no English it meant it was very difficult for us to help him find the hotel, and we wasted at least an hour driving around Tbilisi with the driver getting increasingly confused, stressed and angry. It was all very frustrating as we wouldn't have been in that position if we'd had the internet access for us to check the location on our own maps to share with the driver.

Aside from that, both drivers regularly spoke on their mobile phones as they drove, which is against the law, and at times (eg going round narrow mountain roads) felt very dangerous. At one point the first driver also spent around an hour calling friends and having very loud conversations, which was actually quite distracting and not very respectful to us as paying customers.

Overall, the drivers were nice enough guys, but we felt it would have been useful for the tour company to give them some clearer directions about appropriate behaviour and also to make sure they are fully briefed on directions (which also could have solved the problem of our driver finding the hotel in Tbilisi).

  First part of seminar-discussion that took place on 22nd of July in 2 Abovyan Street ended. In result, the participants who were representatives of tourism sphere got theoretical knowledge about Zarni-Parni... read more cave castle complex. Guide and historian Roland Tmoyan spoke about the historic past of the complex, the changed implemented after the renovation, the role of the complex in Armenian tourism and some other information about Zarni-Parni cave castle complex.

During the seminar, chairman told the participants about the connection between Haghpat and Zarni-Parni cave castle complex. The last mentioned is to protect one of the most famous Armenian medieval monasteries of Haghpat. As it was mentioned in the post, seminar would be consisted of 2 parts: theoretical and visit to the complex. Soon the participants will visit Zarni-Parni cave castle complex and they will use their theoretical knowledge.