Returning to town we visited the main square, Fountains Square. We had a great lunch at Boroni then enjoyed beautiful Park Sahil before returning to the hotel on Nizami Street, the lovely pedestrian street, for the start of a walking tour.

Our guide, Roya, met us in the hotel lobby. We visited Shirvan Shahs’ Palace, saw the old hamam baths with the large domes, and climbed the eight flights of Maiden Tower for great views of Baku. We visited beautiful Istiglaliyaat Street where we saw the Literature Museum, City Hall, the President’s House, and stopped to see a Guinness Record number of miniature books at the Miniature Museum.

We visited the old caravanserai briefly. The Multani Caravanserai is a historical site but now contains souvenir and other shops. It’s a beautiful old building, just a few minutes from the Maiden Tower.

Baku was setting up for a Formula 1 race in the city and had multiple fencing up around the sidewalks and roads which made a walking tour challenging. That evening I joined Ran, Brigette, Edith, originally from the Philippines but living in LA, and sisters Olivia and Odette for dinner at Firuze, not nearly as good as the food at Boroni.

The next day we left Baku to see the mud volcanoes at Gobustan Reserve. Azerbaijan is home to more than than half of the world’s mud volcanoes due to its natural gas and petroleum reserves. The mud is not hot, like at Yellowstone because it’s not due to actual volcanic activity, but they do release methane gas. Many locals come out to take mud baths.

Our van/small bus wouldn’t be safe on these dirt roads so we all switched to small four-wheel drive vehicles, three passengers each. The drive out was fun!

We learned that some of the volcanoes are linked to minor earthquakes and help scientists study tectonic stress.

We continued to the Petroglyphs Museum of Qobustan, I was expecting just a “museum” but this is an open air museum with a large number of well preserved petroglyphs on the walls and rocks from the 11th century BC, some as old as 40,000 years. This was amazing.

We stopped for lunch on the drive back to Baku at a very touristy place, Sharg, not recommended. Returning to Baku we went to the great Heydar Aliyev Center, a cultural and art center. The building, like many in Baku, is very unique and I loved the art and exhibits, too. They had a floating scarf display that looked like something out of Harry Potter so had to send that video to my daughter, the number one Harry Potter fan. I really loved the exhibit of Rabbitwoman and Dogman by Gillie and Marc. They had a fantastic room of rugs, one of musical instruments, clothes, it was a great museum.

Before being dropped off at our hotel, we stopped to visit Martyrs Lane. Martyrs Lane honors people killed in a USSR terrorist attack on civilians in Baku. When the Soviet republics were breaking away, Soviet troops launched a violent crackdown in Baku on 20 January 1990. Over 200 were killed and 700 injured, this event is called “Black January” in Azerbaijan. All the civilians are buried along this lane with a memorial and eternal flame.

The memorial offers great views over the city but then we walked down to the Baku Panorama or Taras Widokowy w Baku, for even better views. I took a perfect picture of the Flame Towers, saw the harbor, the Carpet Museum (designed like a rolled rug), and the old city. We were there early evening and had perfect light.

That evening, Odette, Olivia, and I went in search of a restaurant to try Sah Plov, the Azerbaijan national dish. After asking around, we found Babil Restaurant. Sah Plov is a pastry shell filled with rice, meat, apricots and more. It took quite a while since they make from scratch after ordering. The display and cutting is lovely, better than the taste. I thought it rather bland, it was mostly just rice and it needed more seasoning, too.

The next day we checked out of the hotel and left for Sheki.

We stopped to see the Diri Baba Mausoleum in the village of Maraza. I got some nice pictures of the area but it’s nothing I would recommend to see if it wasn’t on the tour.

We visit the Juma or Jummah Mosque in Shamakha, which was recently restored. This is a beautiful building and had some gorgeous tile.

My favorite site of the day was the Yeddi Gumbez Mausoleum, the Shirvan Shah’s family graveyard. It is also called Seven Domes since there were seven domed tombs here, only three still intact. There are tombstones both in and out of the domes, some of the tombstones still show original paint. A lovely quite site.

We also visited the first Albanian Church in the Caucasus in Kish. Also known as the Holy Mother of God Church, Church of Kish, Church of Saint Elishe. Despite being called the Albanian Church by our guide, I read later that archaeological research in 2000 show it was a Georgian church, later used as Chalcedonian, then Armenian Apostolic.

The church dates from the 12th c, but there are burial sites beneath the church dating back to 3000 BCE. There is a statue on site, Javanshir’s Prayer, King of Albania, and a goat cult burial place with goat bones. It’s a lovely location up steep, narrow roads, so we all switched to the Russian cars, the Lada, that seem so be half of the cars on the road.

The church grounds are beautiful and there are many ruins and models of other churches displayed, and over 1500 burial sites have been found.

After arriving in Sheki, we visited Sheki Fortress, or Sheki Khan Palace, a UNESCO Heritage Site. We stopped at the beautiful Upper Caravanserai in town before going to our hotel, the Sheki Palace. The common areas were much nicer than the rooms and breakfast was quite disappointing. I went out that night and picked up a chicken kebob to eat in my room plus found some excellent baklava on the walk back.

The next morning we had about a two hour drive to the Georgian border. We had to take our bags off the van, walk through Azerbaijani passport control, had a very long walk up a crumbling pavement (very difficult for people with the big roller bags) before arriving in Georgia then another wait at Georgian customs and passport control. We meet our guide Zezva and new driver, Garik, who stayed with us through our trip in Georgia and Armenia.

Important Travel Info

I tried scheduling a Bolt the first morning. My payment (attached to a MasterCard) wouldn’t go through. Added a second card (Visa), and payment declined. Front desk said to pay cash.

I had to go searching for an ATM. I finally found one, tried my US bank debit card. It was immediately spit out, with “no application found”. Tried again. Same. Went into the office, a money exchange, and asked. Azerbaijan is on different network.

I didn’t bring a lot of cash with me, it didn’t even occur to me. I did exchange about €50. I was quite concerned if all the countries were like this I was in trouble. I needed a little more the next day for tips and food and tried my Portuguese debit card. That did work, but I lost a lot of money since I move dollars to euros in Portugal and pay fees for that transfer via Wise. My Portuguese bank charges a lot of fees for EVERYTHING. So really paid more than I should to get local money. TAKE CASH. Dollars and pounds and euros are all accepted at the exchanges and they are easy to find.

Restaurants

• Boroni – really great chicken kabob and salad.
• Firuze
• Babil – tried the Azerbaijan speciality, Sah Plov. It’s a pastry shell filled with rice, meat, apricots, pomegranates, onions and spices. Always for more than one person and I was with two of my fellow travelers, sisters, Olivia and Odette.
• Menzere Restaurant – we stopped here as a group on the way to the Kish. VERY slow service, like most of the places, but a very good Greek salad. My first taste of local “soda” although I ordered a “lemonade”. It was bottled, carbonated and tasted very weird. It said limonade on the bottle but the ingredients said natural pear juice, then it tasted better. It definitely didn’t taste like lemons. Others on the tour ordered them throughout the trip, I stayed with water, beer, or wine after that. Their soft drinks were too sweet.

*** All photos property of Lisa, not to be copied or reproduced ***