{"id":38169,"date":"2026-05-15T00:35:50","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T14:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelandpamstravels.com\/?p=38169"},"modified":"2026-05-15T00:35:54","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T14:35:54","slug":"more-baku-azerbaijan-%f0%9f%87%a6%f0%9f%87%bf-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelandpamstravels.com\/?p=38169","title":{"rendered":"More Baku, Azerbaijan \ud83c\udde6\ud83c\uddff 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Date: 9-10th May 2026 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Travelled: Around Baku in Azerbaijan  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Visited: Baku<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stayed: Sapphire Bayil Hotel, Baku, Azerbaijan  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our Sapphire Bayil Hotel has large spacious rooms with odd plumbing. The underfloor heating in the bathroom is stuck on and the air-conditioning doesn\u2019t work. Luckily I bolted down and complained shortly after arrival and they gave us a fan for the room. Other campers in our group were less lucky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hotel\u2019s restaurant was very good and the food and drink reasonably priced. The other offerings near the hotel were pretty basic, no decent coffee either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway back to our tour. The Azerbaijani love their flag \ud83c\udde6\ud83c\uddff it\u2019s everywhere reminding us of our tour of Turkey because they have the same strong cultural allegiance to their country. Second only to the flag are pictures of Heydar Aliyev<\/a>, they are literally on every billboard across Baku. Most interesting is he was Azerbaijan\u2019s third president and he\u2019s been dead for 20 years ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway we arrive at Baku\u2019s most impressive building the Heydar Aliyev Center which amongst many other things is an art exhibition space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Heydar Aliyev Center<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A large area is set aside for Gillie and Marc<\/a>, pictured above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We spend a couple of hours enjoying the various exhibitions before going on to walk the waterfront precinct, pictured below. The Azerbaijan Grande Prix is being prepared and that\u2019s pit lane in front of the Old Congress building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Whilst we would rather spend another day in the city, today we are travelling firstly south then north of the city, about an hour each way. Azerbaijan has extensive oil and gas reserves and within a couple of kilometre of Baku we can see oil pumps literary hundreds of then slowly rising and falling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our guide tells us the majority of the oil processed come from the Caspian Sea and looking out we can see the platforms at work. He states there are 5,000 people working out on the rigs in the Caspian on a given day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway our first stop is the mud volcano at Gobustan. We transfer to some local taxis for the 5 km drive off the highway to the volcanos. They are in fact created by water forced up by natural gas which literally leaks from the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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