Baku in 3 days: the perfect plan for a sunny weekend getaway

My friends and I flew out on Friday night and flew back to work on Tuesday straight from the airport. As a useful tip, I will say that the season matters for visiting Baku. Strong winds blow on the Absheron Peninsula, so I do not recommend visiting during the late fall to mid-spring and hot summer.

Our parents probably know more about Baku and Azerbaijan. Before the collapse of oil prices, the exchange rate of Azerbaijani manat and euro were equal, the country was very expensive and in terms of tourism was inferior in competition with other countries of the eastern region. Now the situation has changed and the tourism potential is growing!

At the expense of petrodollars Baku has broken with the Soviet past and now the capital has new roads and modern architecture. Only in Monaco and Baku Formula 1 track is located within the city limits! Flame Towers, Crystal Hall and the highest flagpole in the world have been built here. The city definitely deserves attention. If you have not been to Nagorno-Karabakh, your passport does not have a note about visiting Armenia, and your luggage does not contain Armenian cognac, go!

Regardless of the season, Azerbaijan is full of berries, fruits and nuts! For all this we went to the local market. Another useful tip: the market is divided into two parts, most tourists enter through the central entrance and shop in the first hall, while most locals go to the second. In the first, of course, everything is much more beautifully laid out on the stalls, and the second has lower prices. Don't forget that in the east you have to bargain! I did it with such passion that one local (turned out to be a university professor whose son studies in Ukraine) bought me a kilogram of delicious persimmons. He explained: "I know you have money, otherwise you wouldn't have come, it's just that we are such a hospitable people!

In the fall, edible chestnuts are sold at the market. I share my personal experience. You put the raw chestnuts on a baking tray and put them in a hot oven for 20 minutes. Just now you have read the recipe for chestnut popcorn, because at mine they started to explode loudly and dirty everything around. Already after this failed experiment, I read about making incisions in the rind and then you will get delicious roasted chestnuts without harming yourself or others.

Are the names bersh and kutum familiar to you? I will continue this list: mullet, trout, carp - these are all fish of the Caspian Sea, which you can taste in a restaurant on the shore with a beautiful view. I personally managed to try kutum, the fish is a bit bony, but tasty. Also on the menu of local restaurants you will see mangal salad, kyukyu, kyufta-bozbash, chykhirtma, dushbara, kutabs, shashlik and pilaf. I had time to try all of the above, and the taste differed in different restaurants. Somewhere it was a triple, and somewhere it was very tasty.

In Azerbaijan there is a tradition of having tea parties and smoking hookah. One of the evenings we spent in a restaurant overlooking the Maiden Tower. You won't believe it, but luckily there was no alcohol on the menu and the wifi didn't work! But the hookah in a grapefruit bowl and cactus flavored tobacco and the food on the menu was great! The restaurant is very popular, reservations are required. The service was amazing, I was greeted as early as the street before entering and knew that tables were reserved for my friends and I. Tea is usually drunk from special glasses and there was a real samovar on the table. Tea is served with a selection of nuts, dried fruit and various sweets, such as baklava and Shekinah halva.

Azerbaijanis say that the special technology of making pomegranate wine makes it a dietary and medicinal drink. The wine is very tasty! But apart from pomegranate wine, which is exotic for us, they also produce classic grape wine. We visited the tasting at Fireland Winery, thanks to the special composition of the soil the taste of the wine is unusual, I'll be honest, it seemed a bit brackish to me. It is interesting that unlike most tastings I have been to, here the table was full of appetizers - it turned out to be a small feast.

Why am I talking about food and food and food. Do you know that many movies were filmed in Baku, including the masterpiece of Soviet cinematography - the movie "The Diamond Hand". So we all took turns taking commemorative photos at the spot where the main characters said: "Damn it."

Of course, the number one attraction is the old city of Baku. The historical part that has been bypassed by modern buildings. A place that preserves the history of the city. It is interesting to walk around here, preferably with a local guide.

It is also better to go to the Palace of Shirvanshahs with a guide, otherwise you may not understand anything.

From the useful tips: don't miss the opportunity to make a memorable photo standing on the Maiden Tower thanks to 3D drawing on the asphalt.

The symbol of Baku is Flame Towers, they are visible from any part of the city. They are three huge buildings with a glass interactive facade, one of them is a hotel, the second - apartments, and the third - offices. It's a thrill to be right next to them! The cable car helped us to get up close to them, it used to be free but now they charge a fee. A controversial pleasure, first we were the first in line, then we waited for him to move, spent almost half an hour, and went only a few minutes. Although the climb on foot is not easy, up the steps, so decide for yourself what to do.

Apparently, the East is not very fond of straight lines in architecture, and the building of the Heydar Aliyev Center got rid of them completely. And in 2014 it was officially recognized as the best in the world!

Next, my narrative takes you outside the city. Oil is extracted in the Apsheron Peninsula literally in every vegetable garden, you will be convinced of this as soon as you leave the capital. The subsoil is rich in oil and natural gas, so if you're familiar with the natural lights on Mount Chimera in Turkey, you won't be surprised by what you see. Yanardag is the name of the place where, at the foot of a low hill, natural gas comes out of the ground and naturally ignites. And, according to local residents, it has been burning for a long time and neither rain nor wind can extinguish it.

On the opposite side of Baku is Gobustan, it is a park-territory where many rock paintings have been discovered. Such sights in the places of my travels are not often found, so I decided to visit. I advise you to take a guide and see the park itself first, and then go to the interactive museum.

There are about 800 mud volcanoes in the world, half of them are located in Azerbaijan. I had already seen something like this in Iceland, but I didn't miss the opportunity to see it here as well. Getting to them is not so easy, the driver of our minibus refused to go to them, later I realized why. At the entrance to Gobustan there are local dzhigits on duty in Zhiguli, who are ready to take you to the very vent. Our company traveled in 5 cars, the way lies almost in the desert, where the drivers arranged a real race, from which we had a lot of fun. Volcanoes look quite funny, they are such low hills on a higher mountain, which are constantly gurgling and spitting. I managed to take some interesting shots.

By evening we return to the city and... And we realize why they say that Baku in the daytime and in the evening are two completely different cities. It is all in lights, everything is illuminated, everything has changed its appearance. We go for a walk along Shahid Alley and Little Venice, ride the Ferris wheel and admire the fountains.

We traditionally go to one of the local supermarkets to buy some presents and early in the morning we fly back home.

I have already added a climb to the TV tower to my plans for the next trip, the views will be unforgettable!

Thank you to my friend - expat Alexey, with whom we once met the New Year in Sri Lanka, for the help in organizing and conducting the trip! See you soon!