Things to do in Azerbaijan
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A
Çempion Bar
This relatively quaint one-room cellar-bar is air-conditioned and comparatively comfortable. It’s easy to miss down a narrow stairway beside a barber’s shop on ‘Tae Kwon Do Alley’.
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Nizami Park
Nizami Park is a pleasant tree-shaded retreat overlooking the broad gravel bed of the Qudiyalçay River. A long flight of steps lined with statues of Adonis-like Soviet youth leads down to the old bridge.
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House Museum
The lovers of perversely off-beat attractions can nonetheless admire Raşidbey Әfəndiyev's spectacles, family portraits and the textbooks which he penned at his loveably prosaic house museum.
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B
Bəh Bəh Club
Kilims on walls, heavy wooden tables and an excellent selection of regional food including saj (sizzler-roast) dishes and fisincan (Azeri-Iranian walnut-chicken). The live music is low-key.
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C
Konti Pub
This medieval-style bierstübe -cavern offers the novel concept of letting you pour your own draught beers. Be careful where you sit: some metered taps dispense Xırdalan at AZN3 per litre.
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D
Café Caramel
Good espressos come with complimentary cookie and glass of chilled drinking water. Small, with modern décor including a bridge-like upper level offering street views down through century-old vaulting.
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E
Qala Düzü
The big main building is a wedding palace, not a regular restaurant, but cliff-top pavilion seats in the park outside offer lovely summer views across the river valley and of the forested mountains beyond.
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F
USSR
This basement Soviet-nostalgia bar is decidedly downmarket and a little musty, but has some fun photos of politburo stars and a Red Army coat and general’s cap that you can don for souvenir photos.
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G
Stepanakert Carpet Factory Showroom
The Stepanakert Carpet Factory Showroom sells handmade carpets and runners that make great souvenirs. It ships worldwide if you don’t want to lug your carpet around the Caucasus.
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Azza
Three floors of coffee-and-cream minimalism within a historic pavilion right on Fountain Sq. Excellent food including decent pastas (AZN7) is served by self-consciously handsome, slow-motion waiters.
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H
Kafe Tbilisi
Kafe Tbilisi has a tetchy manager but the prices are very reasonable (if double what the English menu says!). Try the scrumptious eggplant strips topped with walnut paste (40q each).
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I
Book Shop of the Presidential Administration
Sells an amusing selection of hagiographic literature about both Әliyevs, as well as postcards and several guide-pamphlets that you could have got for free from the tourist information office.
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U Dali
Misleadingly signed ‘Café Napoli’, U Dali serves tasty Georgian home-cooking at candlelit basement booths. It’s sweetly unsophisticated, the mushroom dishes are excellent.
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J
Kalinka
Calm and remarkably suave, with soaring high ceiling vaults yet very modestly priced and with a menu in English. The ‘black pearls’ (stuffed prunes; AZN2) are particularly delicious.
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mosque
One block east of the junction of Heydar Әliyev küç and Qutqaşınli pr, the centre of town unanimously known as Saat Yanıis, is the colonnaded 19th-century mosque.
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MUM
Also known by its Russian acronym TsUM, Baku’s oldest department store is MUM with four floors of stall-shops selling everything from cheap electronics to wedding dresses.
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Aroma
Baku’s best combination of comfort, fashionable décor and great coffee. Pod lamps and electro-retro feel downstairs, street-view sofa seats above. It’s also a wi-fi hot spot.
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Kitab
The most reliable place to find excellent 1:500,000 topographic maps of Azerbaijan (AZN4). They’re rolled up amid other much poorer versions so ask to look at a few. No English spoken.
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Mahir Kafé
A very plain place with just two sit-down tables, but serving perhaps the best lavaş döner (döner kebab in lavaş bread) in all of Azerbaijan (AZN1.20).
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Nikol Duman Memorial Museum
On the way to Stepanakert you can stop by the village of Ghshlagh to the visit the unique Nikol Duman Memorial Museum, which honours the life of the renowned Dashnak leader.
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K
Tourist Bazaar
The colourful tourist bazaar, along with various souvenir and ‘antique’ shops, mostly sells tacky rubbish, though the old Soviet-era badges are cheap and fun.
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History Museum
The main attraction of the History Museum is the building itself, a century-old brick mansion built in ‘Scooby-Doo gothic’ style. It looks great when illuminated at night.
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History Museum
There's a little History Museum but the main attraction in Quba is just wandering its orderly grid of quiet leafy streets, admiring the 19th century Russian houses and distinctive mosques
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Ocean Deck
Plonked in the middle of a duck pond, the terrace of this American café-bar makes a delightful people-watching perch in the summer. However, its small interior is rather lacklustre.
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L
Public
More comfy sofa seating is hidden away in the back room behind the sparse front bar area. Excellent espressos are comparatively inexpensive (AZN2) and there’s an AZN6 lunch deal.
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