Armenia With Kids: An Honest Family Travel Guide From Yerevan

Travelling in Armenia with kids works better than most parents expect, for one simple reason: this is a country where a child in a restaurant is treated as good news rather than a problem. The practical difficulties are distance and winding roads, not safety or food. Here is how families actually make it work.

How Armenians treat children, and what that means for you

Start here, because it changes everything else. Children in Armenia are public property in the nicest sense. A stranger on the metro will offer your toddler a sweet. A waiter will pick up your baby and carry her round the kitchen to meet the cook, and will be faintly hurt if you object. Grandmothers will tell you the child is underdressed, because the child is always underdressed. None of this is intrusive by local standards, it is affection, and after a few days most families stop bracing for it.

The flip side is that formal child infrastructure is thin. Changing tables are rare outside malls, high chairs are hit and miss, and nobody expects children to be in bed at seven. Armenian families eat out at nine in the evening with a four-year-old asleep on a banquette, and nobody blinks. Our guide to Armenian culture and hospitality explains more of the social logic behind this.

Yerevan is the family base, and it earns it

Keep the capital as your anchor. It is compact, flat in the centre, genuinely safe at night, and full of things children like without anyone having designed them for children.

The Cascade

The giant limestone stairway is the single best family site in the city. There are indoor escalators running up inside it, which turns a 572-step climb into a game, and modern sculptures at every level: a fat bronze cat, a blue kiwi, rabbits and lions. The sculpture garden at the bottom is free and the fountains run all summer. Go early or after five when the stone has cooled.

Parks and the zoo

Victory Park above the Cascade has an old-fashioned funfair with a Ferris wheel and bumper cars, plus the enormous Mother Armenia statue, and the views over the city are the best you will get. Lovers’ Park in the centre is shaded, has a pond and space to run. Yerevan Zoo is modest by western European standards and some families prefer to skip it, but it is cheap and small children enjoy it. Circular Park has a rope-course and playgrounds.

Water and rainy days

Yerevan has several water parks that open through the summer, and most large hotels sell day passes to their pools. On a hot afternoon this is often a better investment than another church. For the full list of what the city offers, see things to do in Yerevan.

Cable cars, which are the easiest win in the country

Nothing sells a monastery to an eight-year-old like arriving by cable car. The Wings of Tatev in the far south is 5,752 metres long and holds the world record for the longest non-stop double-track reversible aerial tramway. The crossing takes about twelve minutes over the Vorotan gorge and children talk about it for weeks. The catch is the drive: Tatev is four to five hours from Yerevan each way, so it belongs in a longer trip with an overnight in Goris, not a day out. See our Tatev and Wings of Tatev guide, or the two-day Tatev tour which breaks the journey properly.

Closer to hand, the spa town of Jermuk has a short cable car and a waterfall walk, and Tsakhkadzor, about an hour from Yerevan, has a three-stage gondola up Mount Teghenis that runs in summer as well as ski season. Tsakhkadzor is the single best half-day mountain trip with small children.

Lake Sevan, the closest thing to a beach holiday

Sevan sits at 1,900 metres and is enormous. In July and August the shallow northern beaches near Sevan town warm to roughly 20 to 23 degrees, which is swimmable for children if not luxurious, and the sand is real. Beach clubs rent loungers and umbrellas for a few thousand dram. Mornings are cold and afternoon wind can be strong, so plan to swim between noon and four.

Combine it with the Sevanavank peninsula, where the two ninth-century churches sit at the top of about 200 steps. Small children find the steps a challenge and the view a reward. Lake trout, ishkhan, grilled whole, is a reliable dinner. Details in our Lake Sevan travel guide.

Dilijan, forty minutes further, is the cool green alternative when the plain is baking. Forest trails, a small old town, and the walk to Haghartsin monastery under beech trees. See the Dilijan guide, or do both in one go with the Sevan and Dilijan day trip.

Distances, switchbacks and car sickness

This is the part families underestimate. Armenia is roughly the size of Belgium, but average driving speeds are closer to 55 km/h than 90, because almost every road crosses a pass. A trip that looks like 120 kilometres on the map takes two and a half hours and includes forty hairpin bends.

What works with children:

• Keep single drives under two hours wherever possible, and under ninety minutes for under-fives.
• Stop every forty minutes even if nobody has asked. There is almost always a roadside spring, a fruit stall or a khachkar to look at.
• Put the child prone to sickness in the front, windows cracked, eyes on the horizon.
• Drive in the morning. Winding roads after a large Armenian lunch are a bad combination.
• Avoid the Selim Pass and the Vorotan Pass with very young children if you can route around them.

Comfortable day trips from Yerevan with children are Garni and Geghard (about 40 minutes each way, and the basalt columns of the Symphony of Stones are a genuine hit), Khor Virap (45 minutes, and children can peer into the pit), Echmiadzin (25 minutes) and Tsakhkadzor. More on the logistics in getting around Armenia, and the Garni and Geghard half-day tour keeps the driving short.

Food children will actually eat

Armenian food is mild. There is almost no chilli heat anywhere in the cuisine, which removes the main obstacle for young palates. Reliable orders:

• Lavash, the thin flatbread, endlessly useful for wrapping anything.
• Khorovats, grilled pork, chicken or lamb skewers, plain and smoky.
• Lahmajo, a paper-thin round of dough with a little minced meat, which is close enough to pizza to be sold as such.
• Manti, tiny boat-shaped baked dumplings served with yogurt, a favourite with most children.
• Matsun, thick plain yogurt, and fresh cheeses that are nearer mozzarella than anything strong.
• Gata, a sweet bread, and Armenian ice cream, which is dense and good.

Fruit is the secret weapon. Apricots in late June and July, peaches, figs, grapes from August, and pomegranates in October are all worth planning meals around. Fresh pomegranate juice is pressed on street corners. Avoid ordering children the sour spas soup or anything labelled with wild herbs, jengyalov hats, on a first attempt. Our Armenian food guide goes dish by dish.

Where to stay with a family

In Yerevan, rent an apartment. The city has an enormous stock of serviced flats in the centre, they cost less than two hotel rooms, they come with a kitchen and a washing machine, and children sleep better with a door between them and the parents. Look at the streets around Amiryan, Saryan and Mashtots Avenue for walkability.

Outside the capital, family-run guesthouses are the pick. They usually have a garden, sometimes chickens, always too much breakfast, and the owners will happily feed your children at six in the evening even though they themselves eat at nine. Around Sevan and in Tsakhkadzor there are resort hotels with pools, which earn their cost on hot weeks. In Dilijan, look for something on the forest edge rather than on the main road.

Health, safety and the boring but useful bits

Armenia is a safe country for families and violent crime is very rare. Tap water in Yerevan comes off the mountains and is excellent; children can drink it freely, and the public drinking fountains, pulpulaks, on every second street corner are safe and a game in themselves. Pharmacies are plentiful and many are open around the clock, and staff often speak Russian and increasingly English. Nappies, formula and standard children’s medicines are easy to buy in Yerevan supermarkets, less so in villages, so stock up before you head out.

Sun is the real hazard. Yerevan sits at 1,000 metres and the summer sun is fierce; hats and high-factor cream are not optional in July. Shade is scarce at monastery sites. Traffic is the other one: drivers are assertive and pedestrian crossings are treated as a suggestion, so hold hands on Mashtots Avenue. Our is Armenia safe article covers the wider picture.

A workable one-week family shape

Three nights in Yerevan with the Cascade, Victory Park, the zoo and a water park, plus one easy day trip to Garni and Geghard. Then two nights on Lake Sevan for swimming and Sevanavank, then two nights in Dilijan for forest walks and cooler air, and back to Yerevan for the flight. That is about six hours of total driving across the week, which small children can absorb. If your children are older than about ten, add Tatev and use the 10-day Armenia itinerary as your frame instead.