Weekend trips from Yerevan with friends, and who pays what

The weekend trip is a small version of the big one

A weekend away from Yerevan is easy to plan and easy to get wrong with money. The trip is short, so nobody wants to “do the accounts.” There are six or eight of you, one car or two, one person who booked the house and another who bought the meat. By Monday, nobody remembers who paid for what.

The good news is that the same few rules cover almost every getaway. The costs fall into three kinds:

• Shared by everyone: the house, the groceries, the fuel for the car you all sat in.
• Shared by some: the dinner a few of you skipped, the second car.
• Personal: your own ski pass, your own souvenirs, the extra coffee.

Decide which kind a cost is when you pay it, and the rest is arithmetic. Below are the classic trips, and what usually lands in each bucket. (For a longer Armenia trip with cash, cards and euro bookings, we wrote a separate guide.)

Lake Sevan: the day that becomes a weekend

Sevan is the big lake close to the capital, and it’s where a lot of summer weekends go: a beach day, a fish lunch, maybe a night in a guesthouse by the water.

Usually shared: the guesthouse or cottage, one big lunch, fuel. Usually personal: anyone’s extra drinks, a boat ride that only some people take.

The classic trap is the lunch. One person pays the whole table’s bill because they’re standing at the till. That’s fine. Just add it for everyone who sat down, and leave off the friend who only came for the swim.

Dilijan: the cottage weekend

Dilijan is forest, hills and rented wooden houses. This is the trip where the biggest cost is a single payment: the house.

Say a cottage costs 120,000 ֏ for the night and six of you sleep there. That’s 20,000 ֏ each, exactly. If a seventh friend comes only for the day and doesn’t stay, they’re not on the cottage. They are on the dinner.

The rule is simple: split the house by who slept there, and the food by who ate. The two lists are often different, and that’s fine.

Tsaghkadzor in winter: the ski pass is yours

Tsaghkadzor is Armenia’s ski resort. In winter, it’s the weekend everyone wants. It’s also where the “personal versus shared” line matters most.

Shared: the chalet or hotel room, fuel, a hot meal after skiing. Personal: the lift pass, the ski rental, the lesson. One person skis all day, another sits in the café. Splitting the lift pass between them is how an easy weekend turns into an awkward one.

If someone does pay for everyone’s passes at the counter, because it’s quicker, add each pass as a separate expense, for the one person it belongs to. It takes a minute and nobody has to ask later.

Garni and Geghard: a day trip, one car

This is the classic day out. A temple, a monastery carved into the rock, a gorge, and home by evening. There’s no hotel, so the money is small and goes quickly out of mind.

Shared: fuel, or the fare if you hired a driver, lunch. Personal: whatever you bought at a stall for yourself.

The one thing worth saying out loud before you leave is who is driving, and how the fuel is shared. A common deal: the driver doesn’t pay for fuel, and everyone else in the car splits it. Say fuel for the day comes to 21,000 ֏ and three friends rode with the driver. Each of the three pays 7,000 ֏, and the driver pays nothing. Agree it in the car and it’s done.

Tatev and the south: the longer drive

Tatev has a monastery and a cable car, and the road to it passes through Goris and the south of the country. It’s a long way for one day, so this is a real weekend, with a night or two on the road.

Shared: fuel (a lot of it), the guesthouse, the groceries. Personal: the cable car ticket, if some of you would rather skip it.

With long drives, fuel is the biggest shared cost, and it’s easy to lose track of. Fill up, add it, move on. If three different people fill the tank over two days, you’ll be glad each one was recorded the moment it happened, not guessed from memory.

Tbilisi: when the weekend crosses a border

Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, is the classic “long weekend abroad” from Yerevan. The new thing here is a second currency: Georgia uses the lari, while the trip starts and ends in drams.

Shared: the apartment, the dinners, taxis. Personal: shopping.

The tip is to keep one rule for the whole trip. Record each expense in the currency it was actually paid in, and pick one currency for the group to settle in. If someone paid a dinner in lari, enter it in lari and let the conversion happen once, at a rate you can see. If your bank charged a different rate than the one you looked up, use the bank’s. It’s the real cost to the person who paid. Our guide on splitting expenses in multiple currencies goes through it step by step.

The khorovats run

One expense deserves its own section, because almost every Armenian weekend has it: the shopping run for a barbecue. Meat, vegetables, bread, drinks, charcoal.

Whoever does the run pays, and it’s shared by everyone who will eat. Say it comes to 45,000 ֏ for six people. That’s 7,500 ֏ each. The person who bought it is owed 37,500 ֏ by the other five, and their own share is already covered.

Drinks are where people differ. If three of you are drinking and the rest aren’t, don’t pretend it’s equal. Put the drinks on their own line, for the three who drink. Say they cost 10,000 ֏. Three ways, that’s 3,333 ֏ each with one dram left over. Drams have no smaller unit, so one person takes the extra: say Narek pays 3,334 ֏ and the other two pay 3,333 ֏. It adds up to 10,000 ֏ exactly.

Five habits that keep a weekend friendly

1. One person makes the list before you leave. Even an empty one. It’s much easier to add as you go than to rebuild on Sunday night.
2. Whoever pays, adds it right then. The cash payments are the ones that disappear.
3. Say who it’s for when you add it. The house is for those who slept there. The ski pass is for one person.
4. Agree the car on the way. Who drives, who pays fuel, and how it’s shared. Thirty seconds, once.
5. Settle once, at the end. Not after every meal. One round of payments on Sunday evening is plenty.

We built kisir around exactly this. The group is a link in the chat, you add an expense in a few taps, and each one can be for only the people it concerned. When the trip ends, it shows the fewest payments that settle everyone.

But you can do all of it with a notes app and a bit of discipline. The habits are what matter. For the general version of the method, read the group trip guide.

Where we go next is still undecided. If you have a favorite weekend spot we’ve missed, we’d like to hear it.