These will just be some miscellaneous items from Baku. I'll start with the start of one lunch. For all three Causasus countries, lunches and dinners all started the same. We sat down to a table with the following already on the table. We had at least one bread but more often, two types of fresh bread. We had at least one cheese but usually two or more types of cheeses. We had one salad with fresh tomatoes and cucumbers (always fresh and delicious) and perhaps some onions and other things as well. Then we had at least one other salad but often two or three other salads on the table.

We were also always given bottles of water and could have either plain or sparkling water. The second salad at this meal was a potato and pea salad.

Our hotel was right across the street from a large mall and the Caspian Sea. In this case, the street was a one-way street with five lanes of very fast traffic. I didn't see a crosswalk. Our guide said not to worry, just take the pedestrian underpass across the street. It was extremely nice, all marble.

In going to the edge of Asia and Europe, we expected to be drinking tea much more often than coffee. It turns out that these countries are moving towards the West and Europe and starting to drink more coffee. Coffee shops were everywhere and often very nice, like this one on the edge of the Caspian Sea.

One of Vicky's goals for wherever we go in the world is to dip her toes in whatever major body of water that we encounter. We talked to our guide about Vicky dipping her toes in the Caspian Sea and our guide looked alarmed! He said that it's just not done. It turns out that Baku is one of the richest oil producing areas in the world and the Caspian Sea near Baku is loaded with oil wells. For that reason, there is an oil sheen on the water, plus it's salty, and people simply do not go swimming here or even dip their toes in the Sea. Of course, he didn't know Vicky.

We made an out-of-the-way stop as we were driving back to Baku one day. It was just on the outskirts of Baku. This stop was to see the world's first industrially drilled oil well, put into play in 1846, right here near Baku. Furthermore, Azerbaijan was the world's leading oil producer in 1901 and the company leading it was owned by the Nobel Brothers, who were richer than the Rockefellers. The Nobel Brothers were two brothers of Albert Nobel, famous for inventing dynamite and sponsoring the Nobel Prize. The Nobel brothers lived here in Baku and produced oil for 30 years until Russia confiscated their company and sent them packing.

And as if the world's first industrial oil well wasn't enough, they also invented the world's first oil pipeline which was made of birch tree plywood.

Now it's time to move on from Baku to other parts of Azerbaijan. The map below will show you where we went in Azerbaijan, the black lines. We eventually drove from Azerbaijan into Georgia. The entire trip was driving with no local inter-country flights. We had a nice big comfortable bus.