Maidens & Mud
Location: Ramada Hotel, Baku, Azerbaijan
Date: 20th April, 2008
Today went quickly, a trip to the Maiden Tower in central Baku – great views of the city, picking up our carpets and a trip to the mud volcanoes and pictograms in Gobustan.
A day in Baku
Location: Baku, Azerbaijan
Summary: Got our Iranian visas, saw the old city, bought some rugs and ate at a great restaurant!
So, both Lonely Planet and the Trailblazer guide to Azerbaijan are advising people to go to the Iranian Embassy near Old Baku to pickup visas. This information is now out of date. You have to go to the following address, right over the road from the Nizami Metro Station:
On the left, the Iranian Consulate. On the right, Nizami Metro Station.
Iran Islam Respublikasinin Bakidaki Sefirliyinin Konsulluq
C. Cabbarli 10
Baku, Azerbaijan
They were exceptionally friendly there, and one of the gentlemen spoke excellent English. You have to fill in a form (1 page), provide a single passport photo and a single copy of the information of your passport, and some cash. It’s currently EUR 85 for Brits and EUR 65 for Americans. I’ve no idea why Kristy got a discount! Anyway, this money has to be changed at the bank for some kind of money order thing, but a fixer did this for us – it took him about 45 minutes and he was based in a building right next to the consulate.
He didn’t charge us a penny…
We dropped everything back off at the Embassy, and came back 3 hours later to issued visas, many smiles, much handshaking and a demand to enjoy our visit to Iran!
Next up, we walked to the Old City. This is the medieval walled city in the center of Baku. It was a relief to get away from the traffic and honking horns, it is much quieter and less busy in there. Like all medieval towns, it’s full of character and alleyways just waiting to be explored. As these places tend to be dynamic, it was a wonderful mix of old and new (well, as new as early 20th century). It reminded us of small Iberian mountain villages.
The most imposing part of the old city is the Shirvanshah’s Palace.
It costs AZN 2 per person, about USD 2.4, and we almost had the place to ourselves. Well, we thought we did until we rounded a corner and realised that the mosque was in full swing! Maybe there’s a better way to describe it, but anyway, we left.
We wandered past the infamous carpet sellers, which were very mild and polite by global carpet selling standards! We even bought a couple (don’t ask how much), very fine silk specimens which we were assured were not made in China! Actually, they’re really nice and we loved them – which is really the only criteria you can apply if you’re going to lug the things by hand for the next 3 weeks and 5000 miles…
After wrapping up the carpet-bagging, we continued around the Old City, passing by the Maidens Tower.
It was 1820. It closed at 1800… Next time…
Finally, we were aiming for a restaurant I’d read about earlier – the Karavansaray. It’s wonderfully atmospheric, situated in an old caravanserai. Small rooms off the main courtyard contain the tables and a roaring gas fire – it’s very cosy. Vegetables like you’d forgotten they could taste (what do we do with our veg in the US and UK?), fine caviar for USD 50 a plate-load (and I do mean load), hunks of meat and grilled veg. We spent about USD 150 on the best meal we’d had in ages. Highly recommended.
A quick walk back through the double gates and fountains square and we were back to the Radisson, which BTW has a great central location.
Azerbaijan!
Location: Baku, Azerbaijan
It’s great to be finally and properly underway! We took a flight from Birmingham in the UK to Baku via Frankfurt. The flight connections in FFT took all of a couple of minutes, contrasting with the pain of connecting through LHR. That airport is making me bitter and twisted, I should just avoid it…
Anyway, Baku was a surprise to us both, despite not leaving the airport until around 2200 local time (the airport, by the way, is bright. modern and efficient – we cleared immigration, got our bags, cleared customs and were in a taxi within 40 minutes).
Driving to the hotel, I was really surprised at the architecture. It’s dark outside, but there’s clearly a lot of turn of the (20th) century buildings that look like they’re in great shape. Kristy tells me they were from the oil boom that happened around that time. I’m just amazed at how much I felt like I was in a European city.
Leaving the hotel to try and find dinner just after 2300 was also fun. It’s late, but it seems like it’s a “late” city. Loads of people walking around (it’s fine and around 13C, 55F), and lots of places still open. We chose an interesting little place that I have no idea of the name, down in a basement with around 20-30 seats. The menus showed items in both the Roman and Cyrillic scripts, but unfortunately in a language neither of us can read…
We need not have worried. We ended up with colourful salads, full of peppers, chicken and croutons followed by some mutton and some kofta-type kebabs. And some Sprite (I could read that one)! All for less than USD 10.
A great start to our trip. We’re really looking forward to seeing Baku in the daylight.
