3 Days in Baku: Budget, Food Spots, and Honest Impressions

We flew to Baku as a couple for three days — absolutely loved the city: clean, well-maintained, with beautiful architecture.

Upon arrival, we withdrew manats from an ATM (very convenient — no need to run around looking for exchange offices), and right away bought a Baku Card, topped it up with 10 manats (2 for the card itself and 8 for the balance).

We stayed at Travel Inn Hostel in a room with a private bathroom — 97 manats (about $57 USD) for 3 nights. Excellent location, clean and comfortable. When I was searching for accommodation, I was surprised that on Booking most hotels had wonderful reviews, while on Google Maps it looked grim. Many places ask for your Booking reservation, check the PIN code, and then cancel the booking so guests can’t leave negative reviews (and apparently there are reasons for those). I was worried the same thing would happen to us, but no — everything was fine.

We visited the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum — a great exhibition, we really enjoyed wandering around. We also went to the Museum of Miniature Books inside the fortress — a small space, but with many interesting экземпляars. Took the funicular up (you can’t pay with the Baku Card, cash only — 1 manat, about $0.60 USD per person one way). Walked to the Heydar Aliyev Center — the building is very impressive, though we didn’t go to the exhibitions. Walked around at night, didn’t notice any safety issues.

Places we visited:

• Qaynana — too pretentious, and the food was average (we had saj and two Turkish coffees, 49.5 manats — about $29 USD total).
• La Quzu — not bad, tasty dolma, kurze, tava-kebab (all of the above plus 2 beers — 55 manats, about $32 USD).
• Went twice to Borani. Liked the branch near Sahil more, slightly less the one on Nizami. First time ordered 3 dishes + 2 beers — 37.90 manats (about $22 USD), second time 2 dishes and 2 glasses of pomegranate wine — 43.50 manats (about $26 USD).
• Liked Anadolu the most — also went twice. Pide, qutabs, barberry soup and a teapot of tea — 29.40 manats (about $17 USD). Second time: kurze, qutabs, beyti-lyulya, 2 lemonades — 42 manats (about $25 USD).
• Stopped by Bir-İki Doner — 2 beef doners and 2 ayrans for 16.5 manats (about $10 USD), very tasty and prepared quickly.
• Wanted to have lunch at Xezer on Aziz Aliyev Street, but didn’t. Right from the entrance there was some suffocating smell of garlic and something stale, the food photos in the menu looked like a cheap cafeteria — very unpleasant place, no desire to order anything.

For takeaway, bought baklava from Ramizoglu and shekerbura from Azza — highly recommended.

In three days we spent 500 manats (about $295 USD), including the hostel payment. Overall, it turned out to be quite budget-friendly.