Azerbaijan - Baku and Khinaliq

Baku, the beautiful capital city of Azerbaijan sits right on the west side of the Caspian Sea. I flew into Heydar Aliyev airport from Istanbul on a whim. It was actually never a part of my original itinerary but I noticed on my Marriott app that there was a Ritz there so naturally... I booked a flight and I am so glad I did. Upon arrival into the airport, I was blown away at how clean and modern everything was. I took a cab ride to the Ritz hotel and was so impressed with city. You'll see pictures of how clean it was, no trash anywhere and you could tell there was a lot of money involved. They produce oil from the Caspian so it makes sense, you can see the oil rigs when flying in. 

I also learned that F1 actually holds an annual circuit there in Baku and that further solidified how nice this place was. One day when I was going through the city in a cab, there were Bugatti, Ferrari, and Lamborghini dealerships all beside each other.

I did a lot of walking in the city and I'll tell you, I implore anyone to find a piece of trash on the street, the attention to detail was incredible. It reminded me of Rabat, Morocco with the cleanliness and seeing workers all about the city cleaning and sweeping everywhere.

Let's talk buildings and architecture. The Flaming Towers are a notable build, along with the Heydar Aliyev museum, the carpet museum that actually looks like a rolled up carpet, the National Flag Square, the Deniz Mall, and other buildings. Everything was absolutely incredibly built, the most modern it could look, clean with interesting lines and style. There was actually a giant hotel in the shape of a crescent moon (Muslim symbol) that was really impressive.

The food was some of the best I've ever had, I outline this in much further detail in the Chef's Table page under Azerbaijan. The women? Hands down the most beautiful and self respected I've ever seen in the world. American women could never. Everyone was super friendly to me and I learned a lot about their culture and country. One statement I'll never forget, on the first day, I was chatting with a girl and I asked her why the city was so clean and beautiful and her response was "Because we don't allow 3rd world immigrants in" and honestly, that checks out. Even as an American, I was only granted a 30 day Visa and I had to list occupation and income to get it. Smart move on Ilham Aliyev, he's running that country like a tight ship, well done sir.

I can't wait to go back to Baku, it became one of my favorite places so far, it's just quite far being 9 hours ahead of eastern which makes it hard for me to work with my conference calls. I remember taking calls at midnight and 1am haha.