Free Walking Tour of the Baku Old City

The back entrance to the Palace of the Shirvanshahs. Or maybe some other really old building.

The afternoon agenda was a guided, free walking tour, you know, one of those walking tours where the guide is paid with tips at the end and you pay what you think is fair. They have them in all the cities. And Baku is one of those "all the cities."

My guide, Azay, did a great job. And I was the only one on his tour.

I'm used to these free walking tours getting cancelled at the last second if not enough people sign up. I can't complain about that. You get what you pay for.

I was the only one on the tour, but Azay, being the consummate professional, did not cancel the tour. He made a scheduling error making a tour available today and when I signed up, he followed through. Yet another example of how amazing the people in Baku have been so far.

This is the Maiden Tower.

Landmark. One of the signature structures of the Old City. UNESCO World Heritage Site. The name comes from a legend about a young lady being imprisoned there -- perhaps so she would not marry an unsuitable suitor -- who threw herself off the top of the tower.

There's plexiglas walls at the top of the tower to prevent wannabe-Juliets from re-enacting that scene when their own love lives go bad.

Let's take a look-see inside the nearby Muhammad Mosque. It's named for a guy named Muhammad. Not "the" Muhammad.

Don't forget to remove your shoes first.

This mosque has some of the girthiest minarets (the towers from which the call to prayer is yelled)

I've ever seen.

I'm used to see extremely slender minarets where major claustrophobia would ensue if I tried to climb the stairs to the top of the tower.  This one is more functional.  The extra girth is recognition of the fact that this is earthquake country as the Arabian plate is in a state of constant war with the Eurasian plate. Hence all those massive earthquakes in Iran and Turkey. And, occasionally, Azerbaijan.

Another view of the Flame Towers.

This better be some foreshadowing for a different day of tourism.

Next up: the Museum of Miniature Books:

The books are really tiny. There is no way these old eyes could read the text printed within. But, hey, people were smaller back then. Maybe being smaller people meant you could read smaller print.

The smallest "book" is basically a micro-dot, you know, the kind they used in all those old spy movies from the 1960s. It comes with a magnifying glass to be able to read it. I think I would need some more powerful magnification to even have a chance.

This is a statue of the head of a man who had people for hair.

This is the Statue of Aliaga Vahid, a renowned Azerbaijani poet. He didn't really have people for hair. Or so they say. It's symbolically metaphorical. He was a poet, after all.

The city walls that survived the Soviets:

A lot of the city walls -- again this not only being earthquake country but earthquake country populated by people who were smart enough to know it and to take proper architectural precautions -- were so solid that the Soviets knocked them down.

Fear that they could be used to protect a population in rebellion. But why would anyone rebel against the glorious workers' paradise that brought heaven to the earth populated by the Soviet people? </sarcasm>

We will end the tour by moseying down to the waterfront.

This is one of the kitschiest examples of tourism kitsch to be found in Baku.

I present to you:  Mini Venice!  "Canals" with gondolas.  But the gondoliers aren't singing "O Solo Mio" -- which you Elvis fans know as "It's Now Or Never" -- so the kitsch is lacking in the faux authenticity that makes the best tourism kitsch so irresistible. This was totally resistible.

But not this!

The Azerbaijan Carpet Museum. In a building shaped like a rolled carpet. This, my friends, is tourism kitsch done right. Form follows function indeed. Like the now-gone "Tail of the Pup" in L.A., a hot dog stand that operated from a building shaped like a hot dog -- this is a carpet museum in a building shaped like a carpet. And it's supposed to be a great museum. Another day.

More Flame Towers.

Tour ended. Guide tipped. Hopefully enough to reflect that this was a solo walking tour. Time to stroll back to the hotel or maybe get some dinner at one of the kebob restaurants everyone is telling me I need to try.

But, first, a walk past the Azerbaijan State Museum of Art. It's not supposed to be just a "modern art" museum filled with ugly trifles that could have been spat our by a four-year-old -- yes I do have an opinion on the subject of "modern art" that I have been known to express a time or two. But the lone sculpture outside screams "modern:"

I've seen worse. And I will probably see much much worse before my time on this planet comes to its end.

We end the tour with this building:

I like it. I guess I should find out what it is.

Postscript: I conked out when I got back to the room and went to sleep earlier than I should because I had zero energy. And what I expected to happen -- if I went to sleep too early -- did in fact happen. I woke up at 1:30 a.m. feeling as wide awake as I have felt in several days.

Baku, Azerbaijan: Ultra-Modern, Very Historic

The walls of the Old City of Baku

It's not easy getting from Las Vegas, Nevada USA, to Baku, Azerbaijan. But my impression of Baku so far is that it is totally worth it.

I left late morning on Tuesday, September 2, and I did not arrive at my hotel just on the edge of the Old City part of Baku until what was, local time, the very early morning hours of Thursday, September 4. Twenty-four of transit time, including layovers, plus an 11-hour time zone shift, added up to one long travel day. But at end of the travel road was Azerbaijan: my 44th country visited.

The hotel and the hotel bed definitely were a welcome site.  Same hotel, next morning:

I'm staying at "The Merchant," which like the City of Baku, is a perfectly blended mix of historic and ultra-modern. In other words, an historic building with high-ceiling rooms and big modern bathrooms and a shower large enough for the whole team. If I were part of a team. Which I'm not. Once again, this is a solo travel.

This is the street that sits in from The Merchant:

You may be wondering: Why is the hotel behind barricades? Why the chicken wire? Wire the empty roads? Is there something going on there? Yes. There is. A Formula One race, so a lot of the streets in the Old City are barricaded and shut down to only pedestrian traffic. Sound familiar to anyone who has to go to the south end of the Las Vegas Strip in the fourth quarter of the year?

Still, even with those Formula One preparations in place, Baku is a beautiful city.

And we've not even hit the parts of the city with the interesting ultra-modern architecture.

The heart of the Old City is a very short walk from my hotel.

Which is good, considering that I am barely functioning off residual adrenalin after the long travel time to the other side of the globe,

This is Sabir Bağı, a park next to the Old City.

Named after this gentleman:

Mirza Alakbar Sabir.

I am walking the edge of the Old City to take the funicular up to the Flame Towers.

And in this photo you can see the Flame Towers in the distance.

Three buildings built in the shape of flames. Why flames? Because Azerbaijan sits atop a huge amount of oil and natural gas, which is the basis for its wealth today.

This is a fountain with Zoroastrian symbolism.

 

Baku the City, and Azerbaijan the Country, are Moslem, although not anywhere close to the strand of conservative Islam such as that found in countries to the south. But there is a lot of Zoroastrian imagery found in the Old City. For example: the zodiac symbols at the base of the fountain. The zodiac is originally Greek, I believe, but it was hugely important in the iconography of the pre-Christian, pre-Islam Zoroastrians.

It is about this time that I notice the time. The funicular is shut down for lunch everyday between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m.  And I have a walking tour scheduled for 4:00 p.m.

So it is time to turn around and to take in the nearby National Museum of the History of Azerbaijan.

And just a short saunter away is the museum:

It's in a repurposed mansion on a small side street near the hotel and the Old City.

There are some interesting visual displays:

Who doesn't love a skinny horse?

The collection goes way back in time, to the time of Sumerians and the beginning of recorded history.

Azerbaijan is an ancient land.

The museum covers the developments of the Azerbaijani national identity.

The explanations are in English as well as the Azerbaijani language. Which is extremely helpful, but the descriptions are very important in learning the history of the Azerbaijanis.

Of course, some displays need no captions:

Eventually, after all the history, you get to what is typically my least favorite part of national museums: costumes and musical instruments;

These are together in one giant room.

Here are the trousers worn by Azerbaijani wrestlers back in the old days.

Azerbaijan is well known nowadays for producing top-tier MMA fighters. Its tradition in the combat sports is well-established.

Next up was the brief amount of space dedicated to the Communist Era.

A communist rug:

Azerbaijanis love their carpets and have a tremendous carpet-making tradition,

I did learn that Azerbaijan was conquered by Russia during the late czarist period of the late 1700's and the early 1800's. So it already had been integrated into Russia before the arrival of communism, And a lot of the museum described the ongoing animosity between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Even though the two countries recently signed a peace treaty -- they've been in a state of war for quite some although it flared up again a few years ago in the border area far from Baku -- let's just say the blood is still bad.

And since the National Museum is in a mansion, it is the perfect spot for some wedding photography,

Time to scurry back to the hotel for some rest and hydration before the walking tour.

I did run into some fashion photography happening on the side streets of Baku:

I know Baku is not on many bucket lists. It should be.

My first impression -- and this could be the sleep deprivation talking -- is that Baku is a beautiful blend of the very historic and the very modern, filled with some of the friendliest, most welcoming, most "bend over backwards" helpful people I've met anywhere so far.

And I've not even gotten to ride the town funicular yet.