Back to Baku

This is being posted after our return to the states.

After three wonderful days and two nights staying with JM in Deveiche, we head back to Baku to give JM a little R&R as belated birthday presents. The time spent in Deveiche was an incredible experience. The people we met were incredibly welcoming of strangers to their homes, and more importantly, very appreciative of the work JM and Sanyo are doing. It was extremely rewarding to experience all of this first hand.

After a leisurely breakfast outside with fruit, bread and cheese, JM and her father head out to the bus station to negotiate a taxi to Baku. Soon, they appear and we pack our bags and head off to Baku!! Typically, it takes about two hours or so to get to the city, but in this case we arrived in 90 minutes. We traveled through a “brown-out” where a sand storm is so thick you cannot see the car in front of you, people arbitrarily crossing the highway with no regard to traffic and buses stopping in the middle of the road to pick people up on their way to the next destination. An interesting ride, but not as unusual as we may have thought. We finally arrived at the Park Hyatt (our home away from home) in tact and ready to relax for the afternoon.

We spent the afternoon at the pool and spa planning our last two days in Baku. JM selected the dinner spot, Paul’s steakhouse near the old section of the city. The steaks were good, but the potato salad was amazing!! And, if you order the fries and like them plain, say that when you order or else they appear with a steak sauce drizzled all over them. It was a quiet night and an early night as we knew our last day in Baku and with JM was approaching.