Not much from outside - but the interior- wow

Breakfast was great if you liked a lot of sweet stuff, including jelly babies. I found some hazelnuts and walnuts which I had with yogurt, and lovely yellow cherries.

We headed off in the bus to visit Xan Sarayi, a summer palace from 1792. The Murano glass windows were stunning. We weren’t allowed to take photos, but later in the day we visited the Winter Palace and were allowed. Above

Next it was to a workshop which used carved wood and coloured glass cut to fit. This was made into ornaments and bird cages. They can’t afford the thin Murano glass so use much thicker and easier to work with, Russian stuff.

Next stop was a caravanserai from 17th century, now a hotel.
Sheki was on the east west trading route from Black to Caspian Seas, and north across the mountains to Dagestan, so it became a thriving market town, especially during 18 and 19th centuries, when there were 5 working caravanserais.

We then head up to Kish village to see a temple from 2nd century BCE, now a church. The minibus driver didn’t want to take his bus up the steep narrow cobbled streets so we got into a nice old blue Lada. After the church we went into a little tea house where we got tea with the traditional trimmings - a dish of sugar cubes, a dish of green walnut jam, and a dish of rose water jam, for £1. Then we saw how the traditional Kelagai headscarfs are still made by hand. The family workshops housed old machines from the Soviet period when many people were employed in production, there being mulberry trees in the region. However modern methods of printing silk are much cheaper, so the stuff we saw was very expensive and kept going by UNESCO. Then it was a quick pop into a silk carpet shop before we headed back to the bus for a short drive to see a monument to people killed demonstrating during the Gorbachev area, at a so-called panorama view of the town, - visible through pylons. Our last visit was to the Winter Palace of the same Khan as before. Our guide said we’d be able to take pictures, but when we got inside one of the militant curators from the previous palace, now on a shift here, said no photos. There were only the 4 of us there so I said if we didn’t use flash could we take a few for a memory. Permission granted. It was actually prettier than the previous palace - the paintings seemed more alive and less crudely done.

We got back about 2, so after blipping I might contemplate a swim as we are in a posh hotel, and do not go out again for 3 hours.