The land border had closed for COVID and was not reopened by the time we planned to travel from Georgia to Azerbaijan. However, we learnt it was to start again on June 1st – what a shame – I had really wanted to cross by land. In any case, it would have been very expensive with train tickets reportedly £150. The return flights were cheaper than that.
The Centric Hotel is very central and luckily close to an underpass which takes us onto the waterfront and the wide promenade. Sadly the room was not ready for and we left when I could see that the 8 year old receptionist (baseball cap on backwads), had never made up a bed in his life and was trying to make up our beds.
We had our first walk along the Caspian Sea. It was a cool evening the boulevard was full of people on their evening stroll. There is no beach, just a concrete platform where people were sitting looking out to “sea”.
We were blown away by the modern city sitting cheek by jowl next to the ancient walls of the old town. A light show illuminated the Flame Towers, the massive flag and beautiful buildings, most of which with a purpose we could not fathom.
We needed to eat so we ambled into the old town and found a wonderful outdoor restaurant (they are mostly outdoors) which had tables arranged in between the spaces the tops of the brick bath house domes.
We have found the food in Azerbaijan to be great. There are some similarities with Georgian in that they have dumplings but their dishes seem to have ore lamb and rice. Even though it is a predominantly Muslim country, women don’t wear head scarves and you don’t need to look very hard to find alcohol.
We walked inside the wall the old town and then marvelled at the Flame Tower light show before seeing what sort of mess the 18-year-old had made of our bed sheets (not great but we had no choice but the sleep in them).
Luckily the air-con worked well so we were able to have a reasonable sleep. We had travelled all the way from Kutaisi using planes, trains and automobiles and we were ready to collapse.