Food & CulinaryAzerbaijan Delight Tour

ARRIVAL TO BAKU

Arrive Baku Airport, meet our representative then transfer to hotel in Baku (approx. 45min) (check in time 14.30hrs).
Dinner at authentic Shirvanshah Museum Restaurant to try delicious national foods and enjoy live music with traditional dance performance.

Overnight in Baku

BAKU CITY TOUR

Breakfast at the hotel.
Want to have a close look at the Baku`s most popular landmark? Baku business and hotel complex Flame Towers Baku is composed of 3 buildings. The surface of the Towers is fully covered with LED screens reflecting different visual characters in motion, easily visible from the far corners of the city in the evening. Walk along the Alley of Martyrs which is usually being included in the protocol visits of the foreign officials. Enjoy the panoramic view of the city and its bay from Baku’s Highland Park (also called Upland Park), the highest point in the Azerbaijani capital.

Cross the street and enter Icherisheher (Inner City), known as a “Fortress” or “Old City”, a unique historical and architectural conservation area in the center of Baku. This is one of the most ancient places of the country where archaeological excavations revealed burial vaults of the Bronze Age. Maiden Tower (12th century) and The Palace of Shirvanshahs (13th-16th centuries) are the best known historical monuments located in the Old City. Besides them there are a lot of other unique monuments such as mosques, minarets, the remnants of caravanserais “Multani” and “Bukhara”, ancient baths, etc. Stroll down the paved streets of this ancient city and drop to some of the numerous souvenir shops where you can buy national clothes, kerchiefs, scarves and caps, dishes and handmade carpets.

Baku Boulevard to view the International Mugham Center (without entering) created in order to widely promote Azerbaijani ‘mugham’ (folk musical composition) in the world and shaped as the national musical instrument – ‘tar’. Here you will also see Azerbaijan National Carpet Museum, designed by Austrian architect Franz Janz and looking like a rolled carpet.

Wander between the decorative stone bridges of so-called Little Venice, a small town on the water and one of the jewels of Baku. It has two large and several small islands and its gondolas are travelling in the channels full of still and clean water.

After leaving Old City move to the modern downtown, straight to the Fountain Square, the most popular public place with many restaurants and shops, main location for public festivals, shows and celebrations and pedestrian Nizami street, old trading zone with lots of shops and boutiques.

Dinner at Indian Restaurant.
Overnight in Baku.

ABSHERON & SHOPPING TOUR, COOKING MASTER CLASS AT GALA

Breakfast at the hotel
Your excursion will start with visiting Heydar Aliyev Centre designed by world-famous architect Zaha Hadid. It is vast and jaw-droppingly majestic statement of fluid 21st-century architecture forming abstract waves and peaks that seem to melt together. The real delight is simply pondering and photographing the extraordinary exterior from ever-changing angles. Make a stop next to the popular “I love Baku” sign to take some photos.

Let`s continue our interesting tour around “Land of Fire”! Our excursion will start with visiting Gala village (40 min drive from Baku), which today is the State Historical Ethnographic Reserve and Open Air Museum offering the opportunity to see the original lifestyle of Azerbaijani people dated back to 10th-19th centuries. It is a unique place where you can not only make a tour into the past, but also try to bake bread in ancient oven “tandir”, weave a carpet, smear with clay in a pottery workshop or feed camels and horses.

Dushbara or Gutab Master Class in Gala. Dushbara is a most favorite and popular Azerbaijani dish. It is sort of dumplings of dough filled with ground meat and cooked in a lamb broth. Gutabs – a deliciously unique snack which is loved by the locals.

Our next stop is Ateshgah Fire Temple in the village of Surakhani that for centuries has been attracting crowds of thrill seekers. Built in the 17th–18th centuries around naturally burning flames which were previously worshipped by Zoroastrians, the site then had become an important place of pilgrimage for fire-worshipping Hindus until the 1880s. Today it houses a well-designed open air museum.

And the final stop of our “fiery tour” is State Historical, Cultural and Natural Reserve Yanardag (literary “Burning Mountain”), a complex built around the hill located on the top of the natural gas pocket causing continuous flame eruption. Most probably the fire has been burning in Yanardag for over 20,000 years. These natural flames were described by Marco Polo in the 13th century and continue to mesmerize those who visit the site.

Spending time in local bazaar “Sharg Bazaar”: here guests will have opportunity to buy local products which are typical for our country like

Narsharab which is good to eat with fish and meat.

Pomegranates which is one of the symbol of prosperity and richness in Azerbaijan.

Local jams from white cherry, walnut and many other versions.

Visiting shopping malls like 28 Mall, Ganjlik Mall or Daniz Mall.

Dinner at Georgian Restaurant to try delicious Khinkali.
Overnight in Baku

FLY BACK WITH GOOD MEMORIES

Breakfast at the hotel. Check out from hotel Departure transfer. Transfer from Baku to GYD Airport.