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Baku is an interesting place, it has a split personality - there's the new town which is very much new money and flashy cars (there's a lot of Petrodollars in Azerbaijan). Then there's the old city surrounded by a thick stone wall. The lanes in the old are not really set up for big flashy cars, so there's a totally different feel.
I guess the main sight seeing spot in the old city has to be the Maiden's Tower. A large, impressive stone built circular tower with a sort of a rudder sticking out of it. It reminded me of the defensive structures built on the Channel Islands built by the Germans. There's a lot of debate about why the tower was built, and the reasons behind it's strange shape, but no-one really knows.
The waterfront smells vaguely of petrol, and that's due to the oily scum on the top of the water, interestingly this isn't necessarily spillage from boats. There is so much oil in the country that it just bubbles up from the ground, if that ground is under water, then you get any oily scum, and a funny smell.
You don't have to travel far out of Baku to find field and fields of 'nodding donkeys' extracting oil from just below the surface. The industrial landscape is far from beautiful, and has a post apocalyptic feel to it, but it's unlike any other landscape I've seen, and so rather compelling.
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