Ganja

Took the very modern high speed train (a lot like a British train, with cheese sandwiches and twixes, wow a proper throwback) from Baku to Ganja which is the second city and on the way to the Georgian border.

We'd been hoping to see a bit more "normal" Azerbaijan because Baku is anything but normal. Very glad we stopped in Ganja - it's quite significantly smaller and there's not much going on (read: we saw almost all of it on the first afternoon) but has a nice very friendly vibe with red brick buildings, a couple of quite impressive government buildings, and a really excellent local cafe which we went back to three times and enjoyed some genuinely great Azerbaijani food.

Stayed with the enigmatic Huseyn in his guesthouse - involved a lot of confusing phone conversations with his two children because he wanted them to translate, and playing with his cats, both of whom seemed to be called Hooligan. He was a big fan of the national poet and wouldn't stop going on about him.

Saw all the sights (there weren't many) and enjoyed their local shopping mall (the shiniest bit of town, there is a bit of Baku here). The best bit was seeing the largest park in the Caucases - what a claim to fame - which is basically a big empty boulevard with trees on either side. Saw a wedding, which we see about every 2 days.Читать далее