We started the day with breakfast at the hotel again. Same as yesterday but instead of chicken kabob skewers there were “chicken balls” which tasted like croquettes. Paul said they weren’t bad and better than yesterday’s eggs. The coffee was still terrible. 

Our friends from NY arrived in Armenia three days early to do a lot of site seeing before the Homenetmen games began. We opted to wing it a bit, fitting in site seeing before or after games when possible. Today we hired a driver to take us 40 minutes to the Armenian Alphabet Monument, which was built in 2005. Gor, our driver, was very helpful, spoke a fair amount of English, showed us the neighborhood where he lives, where his kids go to school, etc. 

As we drove out of Yerevan, I was surprised at how sprawling the city was and Paul remarked that the city is in a valley, like at the bottom and center of a bowl with the mountains surrounding it versus when we were in Italy the cities are up high and perched on hills. We passed the Ararat Golf Course and Vahakni Residences, a gated community which our cousin’s extended family founded almost 20 years ago. 

At the Alphabet Monument there were 4-5’ stone alphabet letters and a few other statues in the distance. We found the letters corresponding to our first names, I think. My Armenian is very rusty and the American alphabet doesn’t correspond letter for letter with Armenian, but we did our best. There was a vendor selling fruits, who had an adult and baby donkey with him grazing nearby. 

We stopped by a fruit stand on our way back to Yerevan, purchasing some rojig (thick dried fruit with walnuts) and the driver got us a handful of fresh apricots. 

Gor brought us to the Mika Sports Center so we could catch some of first day of basketball games. After watching two games, we then walked two blocks to have lunch at Boom Lunch Food Court. We both got shawarma sandwiches, two sodas, and two waters to go for a grand total of under $7 USD. 

We then went back to the gym and watched D play on the USA East A team versus the USA West B team. It was a tense game, with fans being very vocal, but the USA East A team came out on top and D played well.

We were fortunate to hop on the athlete’s bus back to the city center and relaxed a bit before heading to dinner with D at Baron. We enjoyed hummus and puffy pita bread, soujouk and cheese stuffed croquettes, fatoush salad and adana kebab. While at Baron we ran into one of Miss M’s friends from NY / summer camp and her extended family.

Paul and I went to Republic Square to watch the fountains dance to the music which ranged from classical to movie scores to French ballads. D headed out with his friends for the night and around 11:30pm Facetime’d me on the street with a Los Angeles-based comedian who I follow on Instagram: Jack Jr. His show in Armenia was sold out tonight so we didn’t go, but I’ve seen him previously in Boston. Earlier today we also saw Elie Berberian (an Armenian performer) who is staying at the same hotel as D, and from what we were told he’s in town to perform at a wedding. If we see Super Sako before the end of the trip, we will have achieved the Armenian pop-icon trifecta.