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.