Istanbul to Baku

We were up very early at 5am to catch our flight to Baku, the last leg of this trip. Our taxi arrived at 5:30am and whisked us off to the airport.

By now we were pretty familiar with Istanbul’s new airport and quickly made our way to the gate. Grabbed a couple cappuccinos and banana bread for breakfast and waited for our flight. Used the time to catch up on my blog.

My in-flight entertainment screen had a bug, and I could only choose movie # 6 from any genre. Ended up watching I, Robot, which was okay.

We were in the 2nd row of economy and walked quickly to be one of the first through immigration. Our flight was the only one in arrivals and all the ground crew and immigration folks worked their way to their posts as we arrived. I think there were more staff than passengers!

Immigration was easy with our evisas in hand. (Canadians can get a visa-on-arrival, but it’s an extra step at the airport if you don’t have one). Azerbaijan is really promoting tourism, and it looks like they take that all the way, starting with arrivals and immigration.

There were only four baggage carousels, so it was easy to grab our bags. Through the exit I could see our driver with my name on a sign, maybe 25m from the carousel, so didn’t bother with a cart :)

There was a bit of traffic as we approached the old city. An organized run was in progress (we saw the bibbed runners going by), and the week before the city hosted an F1 race; the race barriers were still up, blocking some roads.

The architecture on the drive in was amazing. Our heads were on swivels looking at all the cool buildings. We even drove right past Zaha Hadid’s building! (The Heydar Aliyev Center was one of the reasons we chose to come here).

Our hotel, the Deniz Inn Boutique Hotel, was in the heart of the old walled city, close to the Maiden Tower (we even had a view of it from our room). Only narrow alleys led to the hotel, so our driver parked at the closest approach and we walked the rest of the way.

We dropped our stuff in our room, applied sunscreen, and headed out for lunch. Picked a restaurant that rated highly on google, with a nice patio overlooking the cobblestone street. We didn’t have a guide book for Azerbaijan, and hadn’t done any research on food etc, so ordered randomly. The salad and mezze were good, but the hot dish took a while to arrive (we figured out later that it’s not a common dish to order for lunch).

After lunch we walked inside the perimeter of the old city wall to orient ourselves. There were lots of little cafes and shops tucked into corners and alleys. Stopped at a little cafe for coffee and snack. All the outside seating was occupied, but they set up another table for us in the shade.

The cafe didn’t normally take USD (but did for us), so we found an ATM and got some manat (the local currency). Azerbaijan seems to be well connected to the international networks, we never had any issues with ATMs or using credit cards.

Got back to our hotel and rsvp’d with our place in Sheki. We were going there tomorrow and had organized a driver and excursion through our homestay in Sheki. Given that there wasn’t car access to our hotel in Baku, I wanted to make sure the driver had the right phone number so they could call the front desk for directions.

For dinner, we tried a place (Firuze) outside the old city. Normally we don’t leave the city walls since it’s usually less atmospheric, but in Baku, the surrounding streets are the hip part of town, with wide pedestrian-only streets filled with locals.

The traditional restaurants in Baku are in basements, with tables in the old nooks beneath archways. Very cosy!

Dinner was great! Heather had done some research before dinner, so we knew what dishes to try, and all were really tasty.