Premier Hotel Baku

If anyone wants to see a quick development of one country - come to Baku or any other Azerbaijan's city for 2 weeks, get familiar and come back in few months.
Rapid and constant changes that acure in our cities are unbelievable.
The place is friendly and honest - no one will abuse you or try to cheat.
The are lot of negotiveness you...

Ici, dans le Caucase, c'est l'été indien: il fait entre 19 degrés la
nuit et 25 degrés la journée. J'ai déjeuné aujourd'hui au bord de la mer
Caspienne, c'était vraiment très agréable. Oui, il y a un décalage de 3
heures avec la France, 4 avec l'Irlande. C'est un paysage de steppes
semi-désertiques, avec de grands troupeaux de mouton...

Arrvivée dans un pays qui semble encore vivre à l'heure soviétique.
Attendus au bas de l'avion par des militaires au style bejnévien, nous
avons été emmené dans un salon VIP, où des officiels attendaient avec un bouquet de fleurs pour ma collègue.

Beaucoup de gens nous ont demandé nos passeports, mais sans nous embêter. On a juste e...

The relief to enter the harbor at Baku and then to actually dock and not anchor-off as we half expected was fantastic. We could finally get off the boat!

The actual process of getting off took seemingly hours of course and we were through to the Customs in Baku.

Fun and games ensued with Pete in particular taking the brunt of the w...

Hi all (Salem!) Arrived in Azerbaijan....been an amazing experience, see my blog entry below, however unfortunately we are still here...yes we supposed to have left on the ferry yesterday from Baku to Turkmenbasi in Turkmenistan....and were at the port for 10 hours to then find out it has been cancelled. The ferry here doesnt really run on a tim...

When we saw that the tour went to Azerbaijan, we had no idea what to expect, as we knew just about nothing about it. After doing some reading, we learnt that from the 6th century BC it was part of the Persian Empire. Around AD325 it adopted Christianity, and Islam became the major religion from the 7th century. A classic era of Azeri culture bl...

Last time I wrote, way back in Trabzon, I think I was still deciding whether to ride the Trab to Samsun leg of the journey to cover my bus trip. Well, there's no short cuts for this kid (except the odd truck tow) so I did it, and it was good. Two days of pure flatness- a nice change from the rest of Turkey. It was to be a 358km run but on the se...

DAY 27. AUGUST 28. FERRY ON CASPIAN SEA Ferry Frustrating So after fourteen gruelling hours we arrive into the port of Turkmenbashi, a city that has been renamed after the glorious president. We went straight from the train to the port where we to catch the ferry across the Caspian Sea to Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. In the process we got to exp...

Day 1 - More Burberry caps than women   After 7 months of being grounded in England , Mr & Mrs R's were twitching like a butterfly in a net.   Azerbaijan has long held a romantic attraction for all the usual perverse reasons that we go anywhere.   And Englands' World Cup Qualifier game was the perfect opportunity to head deep into Central As...