Baking ARMENIAN LAVASH + Touring Geghard Monastery & Temple of Garni | Garni, Armenia

One, one, one, one, one, one. No? Love it, love it, love it. That's good. That's good enough? That's good enough. Hold on. Oh my God, you can see it like starting to bubble up. Oh, I love this bread. It's really incredible. This lady is not happy with me today. Bad job, David, bad job. No, that was great. Good morning, everyone. I hope you're all doing amazing. This is David Hoffman from David's been here in beautiful Armenia. I'm here with my guide Lucy, and today we're actually leaving Yerevan, the capital. We're driving east to two different places. We're going to Geghardt to see a monastery, a Christian monastery, and then after that, we're going to Garni to see a pre-Christian temple. So this is like, it's basically a pagan temple, right? But it's not Roman. It's very similar style though. And then after that, where are we going? We're going to have a delicious lunch and lavash baking masterclass. Awesome. I can't wait. And what's behind us? Mount Arat. And that is where Noah from Noah's Ark landed. Now, let's go explore Armenia. Follow us. So this is my first time driving in Armenia. I gotta say it is gorgeous. Look at this. So over here to the right, it's like super flat. And then out of nowhere, you have this huge mountain. Arat just like literally comes out of the earth and then to the left you have, you know, now it becomes really hilly. And more mountainous. So the whole country is basically mountains, right? 60% of our country are mountains. Wow. We are in Kotak region, which is central region in Armenia. We are going to be high about 1,600 meters above sea level. So that is why you can see super rich landscape around. Yeah, and right now it's the first day of October actually and the weather is amazing. In the morning, it's a bit nippy. You know, you have a little sweater on but then as the day goes on, it gets hotter and hotter and hotter. And the highest it gets like maybe 85 maybe but then at night again, it drops, you know, because you are in the mountains. So you have both temperatures. Wow, look at this. I mean, so over here, it's like, you know, golden brush and then you have green to the left, whole different like landscape though, completely changed right now. And by the way, the two places we're visiting today are the two most visited places in Armenia. Almost everybody who comes here, you know, travelers, they go visit these two spots. And here we go. We made it here to Gegard, Gegard Monastery. Whoa, up here in the rocks. Oh, it's gonna be good. Oh, look at that. Very good. By the way, this is one of the famous breads here, the katia. This is for breakfast. It's fluffy. The inside is very, very sweet. What's inside it? Do you know? It's flour. It's sugar. But mostly they put honey, by the way. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, lots of honey, but super sweet. So as soon as you start walking up to the monastery, there's some people here selling, I guess, like rosaries, a lot of religious stuff. You got sweets. You have, you should see the Armenian sneakers. Yeah, the Armenian sneakers. I had it. It's amazing. I love it. It's like looking at all the honeys, all the bees are like all over it and you have the dried fruits. The very first rock-carved church, part of the monastery we had here before the main one. This is 12th century. We just entered the monastery of Gegard. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, 13th century monastery and the name Gegard actually means spear. That is about the spear that pierces the side of Jesus Christ and Tadavos and the Baphomet apostles, they brought Christianity to Armenia and Tadavos brought the spear with him and traveling along around Armenia, that spear was kept in this monastery from 13th to 18th centuries. So they renamed the monastery from cave monastery into spear monastery. So that's the spear they used to pierce Jesus Christ. So, you know, he was on the cross. They use the spear to like end his life and then they brought it here. That's incredible. What is this? We just entered a cave. Oh my God. This is crazy. Actually, we are entering a mountain because this used to be a mountain. And then in 13th century, they carved this tomb, family, noble family tomb out from one rock. So anything you see around is one piece of rock. So this is like a mausoleum, basically. Wow, this is gorgeous. By the way, imagine they did a little hole on the top of that little hole. That's crazy. I mean, it's really insane to think that they came through slowly carving like this, like in here. This is beautiful. I love it. Look at this. So you have like four pillars and these pillars are part of this mountain. Wow, and this is all in Armenian. Everything is Armenian. Yeah, actually and on the walls of the churches, you see a lot of carved writings, information, inscriptions and the tradition started from 13th century when we had a lot of attacks from Mongols and people started to carve the history on the walls of the churches to keep it, to make it survive. Hey, that was beautiful. Super nice. Yeah, the acoustic there is so special and when they did this tomb, family tomb, they started even to use the outside of the hole as a music school because acoustic there is very special. When we enter the church and your eyes will get used to the darkness, you will start to notice all the beauty we have inside and these are carvings hidden in the corners. And so this is all one rock. This is constructed. It's constructed. And looking on your left, you will see the rock. Wow. The mountain is right in there and then they dug and like went inside the mountain. So we have two rooms in there. It's beautiful. I mean, it's so dark though. And here all the way at the back, they actually have a spring. See a whole spring this side before this church was built in here, this spring existed in here and that was sacred place. Even pre-christian times when people worship the water, they together near the source. I can drink from this? Yeah. The source, huh? Oh, that's like crazy. That's one thing you'll learn really quickly here in Armenia is that they have a lot of fresh water in Yerevan. There's like water fountains everywhere for people to drink. And yeah, this is incredible. This is so unique. I've never seen something like this, the stream running through the church. And so this is all rock carved. Yeah. This is the mountain right here. Really nice intricate carvings. We have pillars. You have the light from the top. So it illuminates the whole thing. Pay attention to the pomegranates. Oh, pomegranates, yeah. Pomegranate is always the symbol of fertility in Armenia. So once you exit the holy water stream room, you go over here to the left and then this is a rock carved church. So everything in here is one piece. So they literally went in and carved the whole church out. I always say there are some ornaments they could skip, you know, but they didn't. This is the most amazing thing about this monastery. So you see the detailed work is done in there and especially pay attention on cupola. There we have trees of life and again pomegranates on the top as a sign, symbol of fertility. So every single thing we see here is carved into like out of the rock. One piece of rock, one piece of rock, one mountain. It's amazing. So many different crosses. I love all these different patterns and that also is one piece. That came, that was one piece. And the staircase as well, the bottom of the staircase you have, that's the ram right there. Wow, this is beautiful. I can't believe this is one piece. Everything here is one. So once you walk out of the rock carved church, you go to the left and over here we have the main church. Now this church was built in 1215. They can see beautiful church. This one you have a lot of, you know, a lot of paintings, Jesus Christ over here. What do we have? Angels, really beautiful church. Tadeus and Bartholomeus Apostles that brought Christianity to Armenia. Wow, with the pomegranates. And again, you see pomegranates, graves. Incredible. And also pay attention to these corners. You remember we saw it at Ripsime Church. They were really huge and here they are smaller, but they have the same mission is to keep the church stable during the earthquakes. And this part of the monastery is also very special because around you find a lot of caves and they were used as cells for the monks for centuries. This monastery is really incredible. What I love the most about Armenia is right here. Fresh water everywhere. Hey, where you from? Where you from? Chinese. All right, guys. So we did it. We saw the monastery and now we're going to Garni to see a temple, Garni. Yeah, to see a pagan temple, pre-Christian period and you're going to love it. Yeah. I know I'm going to love it because I love everything Roman. If you guys don't know, I have the Colosseum on my arm. It's not Roman though. Here we go. Garni. Garni Temple. Super excited. I've been seeing this all over the internet, but I looked up Armenia is like the first thing that popped up. Can't wait. This is one of the highlights in Armenia. We're going to visit. We are in summer residence of Armenian Kings from very ancient times. This complex itself was summer residence. The excavations show that the area is really ancient and from fourth millennium before Christ. This site was inhabited. It's beautiful, really big. How many pillars? A lot. It actually reminds me a lot of a few of the temples I've seen in Italy. Very similar, like very, very similar. This type of temples existed in Armenia even before Hellenistic culture, like minimum from 8th century before Christ. We already have them. We're walking up to the temple now. As you can see, very, very steep steps. When you get up here, there's 24 columns and then in the center, there's this room. What is this room? This is the sacred place for the temple, the main hall for the temple and this statue of Mitra was in there at the altar. So people used to come up in here worshiping him. Probably the best time to come here would be like sunset afternoon because then the light will be shining on the front of the temple. But because we're here like noon, we're going to the back of the temple now. We're going to see this side. Whoa, this is okay. So yeah, so there's no staircase back here. Incredible. And from here, you have incredible views over the mountains. So we're basically in a valley right now, sort of. We are like in the rocky island. Yeah, you know, it's protected from the three sides with the gorge and it has only one entrance and that was the entrance we just entered in. Here we have a nice opportunity to listen to duduk. By the way, it's Armenia's national musical instrument and it's called apricot pipe because it's done only from apricot tree. By the way, the temple is built without any cement. At that time, we didn't have idea about cement, but we were very good in forging iron and bronze. So we could use that knowledge in construction of the buildings temples and right here they used iron sticks to unite the stones together. So you can see here. I'll tell you this is my favorite site so far in Armenia. I love it. Okay. Whoa, going down these rocks. What are we going to see here? What is this? Very special inscription, proving that this area was settled, you know, for centuries. It's not just about first century our days, like we date back the temple. This is inscription in Aramaic language, 8th century before Christ, like you can literally see some part of the writing and this left by our King Argishti the first, 8th century before Christ and he wrote about uniting Karniani, Karniani land, even the name is very ancient, you know, to his Arathian kingdom. David right here. You see the residence, summer residence itself where they escape from the hot summers, but more interesting thing. I'm going to show you now and that is very beautiful mosaic from 3rd century as we found same way. We left it. It's from 14 types of colorful natural stones. We explore the temple. We saw the monastery and now we're gonna go finally to eat. I am so hungry. And you're going to learn how to bake lavash. Lavash, my favorite. Let's go. All right, guys. So we arrived here to Garni Thum and here we're going to learn how to make some lavash, which is this bread right here. So you see the lady right behind me. She's making it. She doesn't stop. I mean, basically she has a dough. She like rolls it out. It goes into the tandoor, which here is the name of it is not tandoor. What is it called? Tornil. The tornil. She leaves it there for like a few minutes and then it's ready. It's basically very, very long bread. And then here we're doing is we're making a sandwich. We're making basically Armenian sandwich. You get the lavash, you get cheese, you get herbs and you eat. Wow. I love the cheese. Yeah, and the herbs. A lot of flaky dough. The bread. Falling apart. And that's lunch. All right, guys. The time has come for me to make some lavash. Check this out. Got the dough. She puts the flour. Roll it out. Here we go. So roll it out. Then, like sort of move it, right? Get some more flour, a little more flour. Okay, I think that's good enough. Spread it out, right? Put it on the pillow. Get a little bit of water. That's good. That's good enough? That's good enough. Oh my God, you can see it like starting to bubble up. Oh, I love this bread. Really incredible. All right, so it's been like 30 seconds. Lavash is ready. You go under the side and then you pull up, right? No. This lady is not happy with me today. Bad job, David. Bad job. No, that was great. After learning how to make the lavash, we're now at the restaurant with an incredible view overlooking the valley and you have the temple right there. And check this out. I'm actually on a glass floor. A little scary. If you fall, that's like a 50-foot drop. But we're gonna have some lavash. We're gonna have some wine. We're gonna have some delicious food. I'm excited. I'm looking at everybody else eat and it looks so good. The putti armenia is phenomenal. Nice salads, eggplant, cheese, cheese, cheese. Let's eat. Lunch is served. Well, just appetizers right now. We have eggplant stuffed with cheese, tomato salad with cucumber, very Greek style. We have delicious cheese. Look at this, like three different cheeses here. Herb cheese, string cheese and another cheese. We have some cream. We have lots of herbs. By the lavash, incredible lavash. Oh, this is gonna be so good. And then we have some more greens here and this has pomegranates, pomegranates, greens. Oh, I guess the whole, what I have to start with is obviously the lavash and how many they gave us. They gave us like enough to like feed the community here. Look at this, never-ending lavash. So I was gonna grab one, make the sandwich. Get enough for the sandwich. Get some herbs. I love this, stuffed with herbs. Right in there like that. Roll it up. And eat. I really love this. It's so refreshing. And if you want to do something else, just like get a little bit of cucumber. Garden cress. This cheese is fermented for a long time in clay jars. So they bury underground. Everything is so delicious. So healthy. Next up, let's try one of these. A little eggplant. It actually looks like it has honey, got some cheese. Can't tell you how good the eggplant is in Armenia. I've had so many delicious dishes yesterday. I probably had one of the best in my life. And then here we have some herbs with pomegranate. I had this yesterday. Very healthy. Very like dark green. Love the pomegranate. Pomegranate is delicious. Crunchy, refreshing, healthy. My jam. And by the way guys, we're gonna try today some white wine. We're trying Van Ardi, dry white wine. Kangan 2018 from Armenia. Oh, it's delicious. It's almost like an arbarino. All right, we got two more appetizers guys. This one is like green beans with eggs. So green bean omelet. Oh my God, check this out. Whoa. I was gonna get a little bit of this. And then over here, we actually have dried fruit salad. So it's a mix. You got apricot, you have what else in here? You got plums, just apple, different stuff. Looks really good. Get some of that. So first, I'm gonna try some of this dried fruit salad. Oh, and we also have some pomegranate. Obviously, always pomegranate here. This fruit salad, phenomenal. Next up, we're gonna try the green bean omelet. Get that right there. That's so good. The egg's still a little runny. Soft. Love the veg. The veg here is so phenomenal. Genats. Oh, this is the life. Delicious food, great people, good wine. Armenia. All right, so here we go. We have barbecued trout. Trout, I'm just gonna grab one piece. It fell apart on me, guys. Okay, but look at this. This is my favorite part, actually, the skin. Nice smoky taste, oils. Oh, wow. This is so good. This is barbecued trout. So you gotta be a little careful. You have to go in here and try to get bones. Separate them all. Yeah, the smoky taste is great. So buttery. Just falls apart. Yeah, so here we got a little bit of spines. Take the spine out, move it to the side. Go in, separate. Just make sure there's no spines, no spines. This looks really, really good. The best thing ever is having this with some wine and the view of Garni Temple. Priceless. All right, guys, that food was delicious. We had such an amazing time today. Wow, what an epic day, a long morning. We started off in Gegard. We saw a monastery, rock-carved monastery, literally carved holes into the mountain and made these beautiful monasteries, the mausoleum, you know, the church, the stream. I really loved it there, by the way. Oh, I'm so glad. It was gorgeous. And then after that, we came here to Garni Temple. You have to visit Garni Temple. I mean, these are the two main places to visit, like historical sites, UNESCO, both of them UNESCO? Yes. Yes, okay. And this is not a Roman temple. It's a pagan temple built in the first century. So, I mean, it's really epic. It's a beautiful place. You have the columns, you have the temple, and next to it, you have basically where the palace was, the ruins, you have the mosaics, and the baths. And then after that, we came here to Garnituni. Garnitun. We learned how to make lavash. I tried. I failed once. I did it again. You did it great. I did it great, right? And then after that, we had a delicious meal. I mean, so many different appetizers. What I love here is that you have all this fresh veg, nice fruits, dried fruits, and then we had like barbecued trout. Really, really good. Well, guys, if you love this video, give me a thumbs up. Leave me a comment below. And subscribe to David's channel. And we'll see you in the next travel food adventure in Armenia. Peace.