We were ready to set off at 8am and were looking forward to breakfast in the café beneath the hotel. When we arrived, we were the only customers there and so received wonderfully attentive service. The food was excellent, especially the granola with fruit and the pancakes.
Food here is both remarkably affordable and consistently good. We could easily spend far more than two days simply working our way through everything we have seen on offer.
As we walked along the shore of the Caspian Sea, we had the entire promenade to ourselves. It has become increasingly clear that people in Georgia and Azerbaijan begin their days much later than we do.
Many shops do not open until 10 or 11am, and life seems to become far livelier after sunset.
We were encouraged by the sheer number of cafés and restaurants serving both local and Western dishes, although we remain determined to continue eating local food wherever possible.
The Big Red Bus tour costs around £15 for the day, so we decided to create our own version instead. We hopped onto the number 5 bus simply to see where it would take us and, at the end of the route, transferred onto the 120 after spotting what appeared to be a promising little lake on the map. I pictured waterside cafés and ice cream stalls lining the shore.
After about twenty minutes, however, we had left the city behind and were travelling alongside a stagnant pool in the middle of a derelict industrial site.
The bus then carried us through an out of town shopping district before finally terminating in an industrial estate filled with builders’ merchants. We were more than happy to jump aboard the E1 and make our way back towards the city’s gleaming mirrored skyscrapers.
Near the main hospital, we stumbled across a calm and charming local restaurant where we escaped the heat beneath mature trees and enjoyed a simple but tasty lunch of salad and a sort of pumpkin filled bread.
Now beginning to understand the bus system, we tapped our Apple Pay cards once again and set off in search of an underpass leading back to the northern side of the boulevard. After failing to find an empty bench overlooking the sea, we eventually retreated to the hotel for a rest from the relentless afternoon sun.
We are finding ourselves falling asleep in the afternoon! And we needed a rest because when we’d recovered from the rigours of the morning we walked all the way up to the viewpoint where you can see the whole of the city. Oil money has made this a bright sparkling city full of futuristic buildings – seemingly if you can dream it, you can build it here.