4AM Wine Time Baby… Obligatory wine in the airport, the land of no time zone so anything is acceptable and anytime of day.
Before we boarded the plane it was very clear that the plane was full of Indians and their kids, and of course no parenting or control over them what so ever. This destination must be a visa free country for indians and philippinos because we seemed to be minority of westerners on this plan going to Azerbaijan!

Wizz Air, bless the air hostess's they must hate their jobs. If I have heard them say please sit in your designated seat for take off once I heave heard it a million times and yet they are still ignored. The flight is 2.5 hours, you aren't going to die if you dont sit next to your friend as you will probably shut your eyes and fall asleep anyways with no entertainment in your hadn't or provided on the plane.

We landed in a gloomy cold yet fresh Baku, this side of the travel was easy, we had a taxi driver pre booked with Booking. com as I couldn't be arsed with arguing and bartering or being ripped off by taxi drivers, gone are those days of bartering. I am all about the ease of things now.

We got to the hotel, able to check in straight away our hotel was fairly nice and the room large, the twin beds are slim lined again so we are going to struggle when we roll over to not feel like we are falling out of bed.

We headed out for a coffee, loads of coffee shops around the place you can guarantee that we will either pick the most expensive / slow serviced or cafe with the most limited english. This time around the Tiffany and Co decorated and names cafe had it all, the menu QR didn't work no matter how many different ones she gave us, the food took forever and Annie called the shots on the first drink of the holiday… an Irish Coffee (because I am the bad influence… I think not.) Well she only brought one because Annie was the only one to say what we wanted which was "Two Irish Coffee's" she didn't get that clearly…

Not bad food, beige and bland but it filled holes.

Time to start exploring on this cold Saturday morning, low and behold who did we bump into walking down the street with his wife.. a man from Barry Island! Living in Baku as a teacher, very nice man and lived outside of the UK for many many years. He said that there were only 5000 expats in Azerbaijan, I think its a fairly small population for a country given that most of it is barren land.

Annie spotted the Hop on Off Hop bus, what a gem! And…. they would go with just us two on it, thats a change! They're a little more accommodating here as apposed to Uzbekistan. We spent the morning looking around the sites and taking in all the architecture.

The flame towers which are the tallest in the country and have two business towers and the third is a fairmont hotel, three for the three colours / symbols of Azerbaijan (the flag stands for Green = Island / Blue = Turkish / Red = Prosperity) It was next to the eternal flame, a memorial for the fallen soldiers when the Russian's invaded and attempted a coup to take over the country. Perhaps why this is why they are so patriotic, there are Azerbaijan flags hanging off all the balconies and flying everywhere here.

Caspian sea is the sea that backs into Baku (also known as the Absheron Sea = Salty Sea), its the 3rd saltiest sea on earth and the delicacy that comes from it is black caviar. It also has black soil on the sea bed that is also found on land around all the volcanoes making the land very good for planting lots of different crops and tropical plants and flowers!

Baku got its name from the Turkish language 'Hills' and from the Prophet Mohammed, A place given by God.

The maiden Tower in the centre of the town got its name because it was a prison for a girl who refused to marry in her arranged marriage to an elderly man so jumped off the top into the sea to commit suicide. Delightful.

We jumped off the bus and headed over to a few of the wine bars that we had pin pointed on Google Maps before arriving. We couldn't visit and not try all the famous Azerbaijany wine! The first one we headed to was actually in a hotel, looked more of a fancy cocktail bar, we started with a beer to cleanse the pallet and ease us in, it was fairly early after all, saying that we had been influenced by Annie at 10AM for irish coffee so not sure the beer was necessary haha. Like rocket fuel, it was 4.8% vol. a local beer, it was actually very nice. We had just one (aren't we good) headed out the other side of the bar and up the cobble street for about 50M of what looked like an appealing little wine bar with heaters and blankets for us to have whilst we sat outside in a plastic tent, very pleasant actually. We bought a bottle of wine to which it took a very long time for them to bring and we are saying almost 30 minutes, we enjoyed a cheese platter which also took forever to come. I think we were two bottles deep by the time we finished up there, a semi sweet white whine was going down like an absolutely treat and one that Annie actually liked! Woohoo! The odd cow s*** smell now and again from the drains that swept through but aside from that very very nice.
We thought we had better walk around a little in the fresh air and see some sights by foot before stumbling into the next bar as it was still fairly early. Well…. it didn't last long, we went through the old city and found some lovely little winding roads in there that hosted some lovely looking bars with views over the caspian sea. Whoops! We fell up the stairs into another one, I am not sure the man outside on the street chain smoking and holding a menu needed to guide us to our table, he was more of an inconvenience to us than anything but I guess he was trying to prove to his colleagues he was actually doing something haha.

Shock, we had another bottle, this time it was still sweet but tasted even nicer, the view was cracking of the maiden tower and the Caspian sea, watching the fog come in over the sea. Trend setters (always) people followed us and soon the veranda was full, people getting in the way always.

Another little walk was ahead of us afterwards, this time across the front because by the time we were 3 bottles in Annie was feeling tipsy, Fresh air would make it better, right? haha! No. Fresh air seems to make it worse, how have we not realised this in our years. Walking across the front there were little plastic bubbles with heaters and tables inside, attached to a restaurant. Annie starting to get loud now and not make sense for some reason I was very sober so I managed to navigated around the language barrier and sat us in the bubble with some more wine and food to soak it all up. It started to rain and get dark whilst we were in there. It was very cosy!

After an hour or so of being cosy, it was time to move on up and out! Annie spotted the bumper cars… no one on these cars and looked like a deserted fairground attraction, however they did work and I was convinced, we jumped on them only to find they speed was definetly capped at probably 10KMPH haha. Not the bumper car experience we were used to, and they didn't even last 5 minutes. Typical!

In the rain and cold we headed across to the last bar, it was a proper wine bar with wine all over the walls and had all the different wine glasses on the counter to go with various wines. You pretty much chose a wine from the wall and drank it. Happy with that, of course we moved onto what I think was our 5th bottle of wine for the day haha. but not smashed or even tipsy on my end maybe it was just grape juice without the alcohol lol.

The city is very wealthy and clean and you feel safe here, there are so many fancy shops and restaurants around the place, you can see that they are wealthy not only because of the oil but I would say that the F1 being here over the last few years has helped to bring in tourism and money as well!

Got to the room, it must have been 35 degrees in there it was BOILING! the heating was on and immediately had to be dropped, oh.my.god it was unbearable!

Lots of water and time to sleep because its been a long boozy day of blowing our very small weekend budget in one day haha! (only about $40 each and given that we have drunk a lot and done a lot that isn't so bad!).