Things to do in Azerbaijan
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A
Qaqaş Restoran
Zaqatala’s most intriguing restaurant has a façade of bottle-ends, an interior of timber rooms and a series of wooden perches out back as dining platforms. Up-beat Ukrainian music adds to the reliable food and cheap beer. Recommended.
reviewed
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mosque
The town's only sight, a fine 19th-century mosque, is 1km further west, two blocks south of the prominent Heydar Bağı gardens. The imam generally allows visitors to climb the mosque's unique brick minaret for a fine view over the town.
reviewed
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B
Pəncərə
The upstairs dining room has a wild-west wooden décor and live piano music. Ground-floor wooden booths emulate the streamside ambience of Azeri rural dining. The menu stretches from local standards to ostrich steaks. Wines from AZN6 a bottle.
reviewed
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ateşgah
Xınalıq's most popular tourist activity is hiking to ateşgah, a small ever-burning natural fire-vent. The walk takes about two hours (towards Laza then up a side valley) but finding the site without help is pretty much impossible.
reviewed
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Cümə Mosque
The main attraction in Quba is just wandering its orderly grid of quiet leafy streets, admiring the 19th century Russian houses and distinctive mosques, notably the unique, octagonal Cümə Mosque. with its distinctively pointy metallic dome.
reviewed
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C
Opera & Ballet Theatre
It's worth seeing a performance at Baku's 1910 Opera & Ballet Theatre, if only to admire the grand interior. Most productions are lavish and even less exciting repertory performances have the advantage of transcending language barriers.
reviewed
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Şixov Beach
Just beyond Bibi Heybət Mosque is Şixov Beach, fascinating for photographing bathers gambolling on the 'sand' with a romantic backdrop of giant offshore oil-rigs. There are hotels, restaurants and disco-beaches here should you wish to stay a while.
reviewed
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Nizami Mausoleum
East of town is the 1991 Nizami Mausoleum, a space shuttle–shaped tomb-tower flanked by a series of inspired sculptures depicting scenes from Nizami’s works. A vast aluminium smelter forms an incongruous backdrop.
reviewed
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Raşidbey Әfəndiyev Historical-Regional Ethnography Museum
The Raşidbey Әfəndiyev Historical-Regional Ethnography Museum, is more impressive than its exhibits: archaeological oddments, ethnographical artefacts and the usual emotive panels on WWII, Karabakh and the Xocalı massacre.
reviewed
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Mausoleum of Yusif Hüseynoğlu
Hidden in Naxçivan back streets are a couple of medieval pointed tomb-towers in an octagonal form common throughout eastern Anatolia. The best known is the 1162 Mausoleum of Yusif Hüseynoğlu, by the same architect as the Möminə Xatun tower.
reviewed
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Heydar Әliyev Museum
The grandly rebuilt Heydar Әliyev Museum is a veritable modern palace of shiny marble. It’s somewhat more interesting than other such hagiographic shrines elsewhere in Azerbaijan if only because Naxçivan was Heydar’s home region.
reviewed
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D
Anadolu 2
Anadolu 2, a Turkish restaurant, serves inexpensive precooked meals in pleasantly semi-grand arch-vaulted premises. Point at what you fancy from the heated display of precooked meals (AZN4 to AZN6 including side dish) or order pricier made-to-order dishes.
reviewed
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E
Star
Star, a Turkish restaurant, which serves inexpensive precooked meals in pleasantly semi-grand arch-vaulted premises. Point at what you fancy from the heated display of precooked meals (AZN4 to AZN6 including side dish) or order pricier made-to-order dishes.
reviewed
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F
Georgian Home
A quantum leap in style, this suave choice makes wonderfully eclectic use of homemade pottery to give the fashionable interior a real sense of personality. Food is excellent but with prices to match. The cheapest bottle of wine costs a thumping AZN35, plus 10% service charge.
reviewed
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G
Anadolu 1
Anadolu 1, a Turkish restaurant, which serves inexpensive precooked meals in pleasantly semi-grand arch-vaulted premises. Point at what you fancy from the heated display of precooked meals (AZN4 to AZN6 including side dish) or order pricier made-to-order dishes.
reviewed
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Dosa Park
Strolling here amid all the fountains, minutely clipped shrubberies and newly mirror-glassed public buildings is especially surreal at dusk in summer, when lugubrious piped music is played from loudspeakers flanking the new, refreshingly air-conditioned Heydar Әliyev museum.
reviewed
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H
Rostropovich Museum
For foreign visitors a popular choice is the Rostropovich Museum, given the international fame of the Bakuvian cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, who lived here as a child. However, it’s of very limited interest to nonspecialists and no English is spoken.
reviewed
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Şəbəkə Restaurant
If you’re craving Western food, this suave jazz-toned hotel-restaurant offers professionally presented dishes at prices that seem expensive in Şəki but would be cheap as chips in Baku. Our penne in pesto sauce (AZN3.20) was perfectly al dente if lacking in pizzazz.
reviewed
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Zaqatala Nature Reserve
The hills above Car make for delightful hiking, where the thick deciduous forests give way to open, grassy ridges at around 1800m. Amid 3000m-plus peaks beyond, the remote Zaqatala Nature Reserve is home to brown bear, wild boar and the endangered Caucasian tur (a huge mountain goat).
reviewed
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I
Divan
The stylish Divan, a Turkish restaurant, which serves inexpensive precooked meals in pleasantly semi-grand arch-vaulted premises. Point at what you fancy from the heated display of precooked meals (AZN4 to AZN6 including side dish) or order pricier made-to-order dishes.
reviewed
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Qadim Quba
You can watch Quba’s famous carpets being made at Qadim Quba, which also has a delightful boutique selling them along with handicrafts and paxlava (alternating layers of chopped nuts and white, stringy, fried pastry, all saturated in a sickly sweet syrup).
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J
Blues Bar
Enchanted-forest theme bar with trees and vines emerging from the walls and a ceiling lit with the moon and stars. The back patio is also forested and for once the Latin music adds some variety to the soundtrack. Around the same square there are several other cafés that serve alcohol.
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Şahin Kafesi
Within the fortress walls the café interior is entirely uninspiring but the outside dining booths are quaintly draped in living ivy and the food is way better than you might anticipate. The particularly outstanding vine-leaf mini dolma (AZN2) has a minty tang and arrives in a clay pot.
reviewed
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Stalin's Prison Tower
Joseph Stalin was held prisoner in Lənkəran during his early revolutionary days. The sturdy brick-barrel of a tower in which he was incarcerated is now under renovation with rumours that it might one day become a tongue-in-cheek Stalin-themed café. Well there's always hope.
reviewed
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K
Artsakh State Museum
The Artsakh State Museum is rich in local artefacts and contains particularly interesting displays on the Karabakh war, including some of the homemade weapons used in the crushing early days of the fighting. An excellent and free guided tour in English is available on arrival.
reviewed