Despite the strange decor of our Baku, Azerbaijan hotel, the staff was very nice and helpful. Almost annoyingly they gave us food and restaurant recommendations at long length.
The fact that I couldn't decipher half of what they wrote was a relief.
We had some lunch at Qaynana. It was a really good start to the trip. The food was great and it had a good style to match.
I was really excited to see them baking bread in a tandir oven in the back on the restaurant. On my way back to my table a guy asked me where I was from. This is going to be a good trip.
quzu sac. Don't ask me we just pointed to a bunch of stuff on the menu.
In our excitement to try everything we ordered way too much food. Obviously I had to order some of that bread from the oven. There was lamb kebab. There was tea. I don't know what we've gotten ourselves into here.
The pip dolma were little leaf wrapped bites of meat and maybe rice. They were good.
All of this magic plus a service charge was 56.65 Azerbaijani Manat or about 33 USD. Not too shabby if you ask me.
I noticed there were a lot of these wooden rooms hanging out the side of many stone buildings.
Papakha wool hats for sale.
I had read that Azerbaijan was famous for pomegranate wine and I had developed a thirst.
We sat down and did some tasting. It was exciting because I feel like you don't often get to try wines made out of anything other than grapes, and when you do it's horridly sweet and gross. These weren't too sweet and I bought a few bottles to take home.
Next we explored the Palace of the Shirvanshahs. Lonely Planet says that it was the seat of the northeastern Azerbaijani ruling dynasty during the middle ages, and many of the buildings date to the 15th century.
I figured these were some cool exotic soldier's helmet. Nah, they were to keep food warm and bugs off.
It's funny, pomegranates are kind of mysterious and uncommon, here we just bumped into a pomegranate tree that had fruit on it that nobody seemed to be bothered to even pick.
We checked out some bazar open market type places but they were all cash based and I don't think we had any paper money at this point in our journey. Sad.
Mike was talking some trash about me wanting to visit the Dəniz Mall. He was loving it once we got there, I can tell you that. Plus this one was in a building shaped like a flower so, yes I would like to see that.
You could ride a slide from the top floor to the exit.
You know I took a little peek at the McDonald's menu, as is my custom.
I did not enter the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum but I did appreciate the fact that it was shaped like a giant carpet.
We were lured into this Xengeland by the monstrous khinkali dumplings nailed to the outside wall of the place.
We continued our practice of wildly pointing at things on the menu.
I'm not sure, but there was plenty of pomegranate.
Dumplings!
I got a bottle of Azerbaijani pomegranate wine for the table.
"Guaranteed shelf life is not limited."
This may actually be Georgian cuisine but it was delicious so whatever.
Mike's jacket zipper wasn't working so there was some struggling. It was like watching the same British lamb being born over and over.
We checked out a bit of the Baku nightlife. There was a decent amount of bars around to check out. The first place we went to was the Old School Cafe. It had a hipster, bohemian sort of vibe with lots of books and antiques all over the place.
We had 4 beers for a bit less than 6 dollars. I was happy with that. Things are pretty reasonably priced in this country.
Old Room was fun because it had some live music going on.
I like carrying around the guidebook like a tourist. Sure it probably makes me a target for bad guys but it also is an invitation for locals to talk to a weirdo foreigner guy. We had a good conversation with a couple of locals.
Baku's skyline is enlivened by three Flame Towers. They display different patterns and I caught a shot of them sporting the flag of Azerbaijan.
Mike realized he lost his wallet back at the hotel so we got the exciting opportunity to revisit the same bars we'd just left. Luckily it was located without much hassle.
I spotted a car manufactured by Russian car company Lada on the street. We were about to see a whole lot more of these.
