Silk Road + F1

Brad and I had quite the surprise when we woke up and it was 10:50 a.m! We just shrugged and decided we were tired and needed the sleep and got ourselves out the door in record time. We walked to Fountain Park/old town where we figured there’d be some cafés. We were right and found a lovely spot with fresh sandwiches, croissants and coffees and had a late breakfast/early lunch.

We walked around the Fountain Park area and then headed towards the waterfront. Signs of the F1 race taking place in the next 10 days are everywhere, from festival banners to directional signage to the fences for the actual track. The city is a buzz. It does make pedestrian travel a bit of a challenge because some of the fences are erected at crossings. It made for a lot of steps for us today.

We reached the waterfront and it was a beautiful promenade with gorgeous views of the city skyline which is architecturally interesting. We decided to check out the carpet museum; the building itself is breathtaking. (Check out the photo.) Unfortunately, we hadn’t checked its hours and it’s closed on Mondays so we couldn’t visit. Oh well.

We noticed a beautiful lotus-shaped building and walked towards it. We were surprised to find it was a shopping mall and went in to cool off a bit since it was 29°. From there, we made our way to one of the mosques.

It was now late afternoon and we decided we needed a snack so we walked back to the Fountain Park area and then returned to our hotel to get ready for our meeting with our Intrepid group. We’ve never travelled with this company before but had heard good things. We went to the meeting and there will be 11 of us travelling together through Azerbaidzhan and Georgia. There are five of us from Canada, two from Australia, two from England, one from New Zealand and one from the U.S. Our leader is from Georgia.

After our briefing, we headed out for a group dinner at a traditional Azerbaijani restaurant and then worked off the calories with a night walk to a lookout to see the city at night. It was stunning. And an amazing way to end my birthday.Read more