Weekend in Ganja
We had another long weekend and decided to spend it exploring another city of Azerbaijan. We traveled a bit further than our previous trip to Naftalan, but thankfully didn't have any car trouble along the way! We headed to Ganja, the second largest city in Azerbaijan. It's slightly closer to the mountains and we enjoyed the cooler weather fresh air.
Along the way there is an old German town that's been converted to a hotel and restaurant. It was definitely an eye-catch to see a completely different type of building on the hillside with its own little village.
Sunday we drove south of Ganja to Lake Göygöl. The President of Azerbaijan has a residence right above the lake and apparently it only opened to tourists (including Azeris) a couple years ago. The lake was gorgeous and it would have been lovely if we could have done more hiking or camping around that area.
After arriving back in Ganja we ventured downtown for dinner and one of our favorite pastimes - fountain watching! Azerbaijan has lots of beautiful fountains and Madi has developed an obsession with them. Her sisters also seem to love them though so a lot of our time was spent watching these three run around giggling and having fun.
The weather on Monday was a bit rainy so we ducked inside a cafe for some lunch and then went back to fountain-watching. :-)
Our favorite fountains were at Gəncə Şəhər İcra Hakimiyyəti. (Thank you Instagram for having that as a location option for tagging a picture!) It was a beautiful buildings with massive fountains on either side.
We also walked by Cümә Mosque and heard portions of what might have been a ceremony celebrating the Eid holiday.
We had a (thankfully) uneventful trip home where I proceeded to sneak everyone's beloved stuffed animals into the wash after a weekend of getting them good and dirty. Then Olivia saw her pandas (plural because she has three). Don't worry though - she was reunited before bedtime.
