City walls II...

Today I am posting more photos of Sheki city walls...I have written few words about the city walls on the earlier post (please see below).

...donkeys...tales...

...they say that in Soviet times there was a time when there was a high tax on keeping donkeys as a part of cattle. People in Sheki that could not afford the taxes would just take the donkeys out to the fields and leave them out there...donkeys would fine their way back and most probably couldn't understand why they were not let in...

...nowadays people are free to keep the donkeys although one can mainly see them in the villages rather than in Sheki itself...

sending you sunshine from Sheki...

I think someone greeted me once saying..."Hello, sunshine"...it felt nice...:)

Today I am sending you sunshine from Sheki :)

Have a good day.

City walls...

All ancient cities have city walls that protected the city during endless medieval wars. Sheki is not an exception. City walls protected Sheki inhabitants from numerous invaders. Nowadays remainders of the wall stand proudly to remind the great past and hard times that the city lived in order to survive.

These are the pictures of the city wall and the view that spreads beneath it...

Something different...

Dear All, in case you are tired of landscape pictures...today I am posting a photo of my son who is sitting...in a chest...of my late grandmother...this is one of the ways to keep him entertained...as you might know for +- 18 months old everything seems boring after... 5 minutes...

Chest is something that exists in every Sheki house. Every girl when getting married would take one chest with her to her new house where she would keep her linen and other things that she wouldn't use in present but keep for her bright future :) nowadays girls think it is not cool any longer to have this huge chest as a part of the furniture...but I still love it...my chest is still in Sheki but I hope to move it one day to Baku :)

Enjoy your weekend :)

Childhood dreams...

I am not sure if you can see on left hand side of the picture sign board of the restaurant. It says "Gagarin restaurant". To me it is quite funny that the restaurant in the centre of Sheki is called "Gagarin". I imagined that maybe the owner had a childhood dream of becoming a cosmonaut and then when his dream wasn't realized he gave his restaurant Gagarin’s name...:) who knows...:)

Markhal

Anyone who comes to Sheki, goes to see "Markhal" (spelled Marxal in Azerbaijani). Markhal is a place in mountains where one can rest, have tea or food, enjoy the views, cooler weather (especially in the evenings) and life in general. Unfortunately I do not know the history of the place. I have always known it as a spot where people go to have picnics...Although there are other nice places to go to in Sheki, Markhal still enjoys the status of the most known resort of the area.

Just another view...

The title says it all...

General view...

Dear All, in case you have forgotten how Sheki looks in general here is a photo, courtesy of my relative, Suraya xanim Abdurahmanova.

Pomegranate tree...

Dear All,

After some break I am posting today pictures of a pomegranate tree in my garden in Sheki. Pomegranates grow well and taste excellent mainly in Goychay region of Azerbaijan but other regions also grow them. We also have in our garden in Sheki couple of pomegranate trees as my father is a big fond of them. To me it is astonishing that the flowers that you see on the pictures turn into fruits. I truly find it amazing. This is another miracle of nature I would say.

Nowadays the whole world seems to be obsessed with pomegranate…we in Azerbaijan have always been a big fond of pomegranate…to us the season starts mid October and onwards…deseeding the pomegranate makes the hands dirty and its quite hard to clean the hands and nails afterwards…therefore sometimes women ask men to deseed the pomegranates for them :) our supermarkets do not sell ready pomegranate seeds…also preference of course is given to pomegranates bought in the market…Fruits of pomegranate trees of our garden won’t be that sweet but still it is always a pleasure to reap the fruits of one’s own garden :)

Have a good week! :)