After a typical Armenian lunch (a wide variety of vegetables and cheese as starters and a rather tasty main course followed by different types of fruit) we headed back to Yerevan, so as to visit the History Museum of Armenia, not before having strolled around the Republic Square where it is located and which does inevitably draw people's attention.
On one side of the Square stood a Government building said to house the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and on the other side a huge curved façade Hotel. Both buildings were built in the fifties and do clearly embellish this wide entertainment city area.
Before entering the History Museum we made our way to the Post office to buy stamps and amazingly enough fell upon a stunningly beautiful office interior which in no way resembled the western type of post offices we are commonly used to.
The History Museum of Armenia is said to have been founded in 1919 as an Ethnographic-Anthropological Museum Library.It is a charming "little" building which houses several collections comprising over 400,000 objects exhibited in various departments - Archaeology, Ethnography, Numismatics and Documents representing an integral picture of the history and culture of Armenia from pre-historic times till our days.
We were not allowed to take any photographs but in the gallery under the Museum arcades which exhibited quite a few important steles, an opportunity I didn't miss.
Our visit continued through the various galeries of the Museum under the direction of very competent Museum guide, who made sure we didn't leave the premises without having been given a thorough explanation and visualised some of the most outstanding objects pertaining to different epochs of the Armenian History.
We then had dinner at a local restaurant in Yerevan, whose walls were decorated with old black and white photographs, turning it into a rather cosy type of space. The evening meal was copious and reminded me of some of the dinners I had had in Turkey, which is understandable taking into account the historical background of both countries.
"Around the table gatherings" facilitate a certain development of the level of intimacy I felt the group was still lacking, so by the end of the evening we had inevitably begun to get acquainted and talk about factual things such as the food we were handing one another over the dinner table or the traditional Armenian music we listened to through the entire meal.
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