I had heard before visiting Iran so many bad and confusing things about it that I definitely needed to visit it on my own and check how things really are over there. And it was the best plan for Christmas and New Year’s Eve that we could do. I am writing all posts on this blog as a diary BUT as this blog are reading mostly people that I know, feel free to ask me about anything concerning travelling to Iran. And enjoy reading about our adventures! 

PACKING 

Getting ready to Iran was for me not hard at all, since I have a looot of a long dress in y wardrobe and don’t wear them much. Javi managed to contact one of our Couchsurfers from Shiraz ( Forough) and I sent her through WhatsApp few outfits that I was going to take and asked her for approval. And surprisingly, everything was more than OK! After going to Georgia for 4 weeks with too many unnecessary pieces of clothes, I decided to pack only: 

3x dress 

2x skirt 

2x T-shirt 

2x scarf ( as it is compulsory in Iran to wear hijab – no burka!) 

What is more than necessary to take with you is money in cash. A looot of cash. You will not have the opportunity to use your hard earned money with credit or debit card. So we took Euros and were ready to travel with a lot of money in our pockets. One very surprising thing was the exchange rate. It took us a few days to realize, that the official exchange rate is almost 3x different to the “unofficial” one. At the airport, we changed our first 50 Euros and got 6 000 000 Rials for that. 

TRAVEL 

As we were used from other countries that we traveled before, we bought return tickets from Prague to Teheran and didn’t really consider any other option. Which was one of the biggest mistakes while doing preparations for this trip. Iran is not Georgia (obviously) and not everything is centralized in the capital. And also the distances are kind of different. So we ended up taking one more airplane from Shiraz to Teheran on the way back. With which we lost some time and money (and needed to spend unnecessarily one night at the airport freezing in the arrival hall), but otherwise no problem. We also didn’t consider the option of not flying from Prague but from other cities close by. Volker told us later, that there is some direct flight from Berlin to Teheran which takes only 5 hours. It would definitely save us a lot of time since we had both ways layover in Istanbul for more than 8 hours. 

So how we traveled inside Iran? 

• Taxi – very cheap kind of transport and also sometimes nice conversation (with hands and legs) with drivers. They usually wait for you everywhere. Also more than 2 hours or so. From Kashan, our driver planned for us cool trip and also helped us to find accommodation in Isfahan when our Couchsurfer could not host us for the last moment. 
• Bus – in Iran, we had the opportunity to be in the most comfortable and cheapest buses ever! Seats were always for supersized people, it was possible to arrange the seat so it looked almost like a bed and also, we were always provided with some food! And it was definitely super cheap. It cost about 5 Euro/person to travel 600 km. 
• Friends car – Sometimes we traveled with our friends ( thank you all guys from Isfahan). I smoked cigarettes (even though in the cities the air is already pretty much polluted) and we also sang. 
• Walk – in the cities we mostly walked. Maybe sometimes we lost some time (as for example Teheran is super huge), but walking is for me the best way to explore places and to feel the real atmosphere. 

TEHERAN 

We arrived in Teheran on the 24.12. at 2 a.m. It took me about 20 minutes to deal visa and then we were ready to go out of the airport. In the beginning, I was really nervous about having the hijab and thought that it is considered as very bad when I will show forelock or something. It was pretty interesting to see how most of the women in the airplane postponed putting the scarf on their head till the very last moment. I was ready shivering already 30 minutes before. We were asked many times from some guys if we want to change money and almost got ripped off. At that time, we didn’t know about the official and unofficial rate of currency yet (read more about it in my other article). Some taxi driver advised us to go to a normal exchange place where we first realised, how crazy it is in Iran with money. The exchange rate was more than double than the official one of banks. The same taxi driver also took us to our hotel and wanted 20€ at the first moment. 😁 Luckily, I wasn’t tired enough to think and started to negotiate with him. Pretty well worked my explanation, that the economic situation in Germany and Czech Republic is different, so if for German people is cheap to pay 20€ for a taxi, for poor Czech girl it’s not ok. 😀 Finally we dealt on 7 €, which became 8€. I wanted to ask the guy, why it changed but he looked deeply into my eyes and told me: “I never lie, Muslim people never lie”. And I just resigned and gave him what he wanted. 

DAY 1 (Christmas Eve 🎄) TEHERAN 

Teheran was pretty confusing for us the first day. I was also getting a little bit sick, so I was moving kind of slowly. And tried to get adopted on the chaos there and absolutely NO order that was ruling there. We were basically searching all the time the Golestan Palace. But on the way, we tried pomegranate juice, typical corn and also visited the Bazaar. I bought sunglasses (because already after the first few minutes on the sun, I realised that if I want to see something on this trip, I need to buy sunglasses. For the first time, I bought the wrong ones. Javi didn’t like them. So we went back and I bought different ones. Javi told me that those previous ones were like a “mixture of his grandma and a boyfriend of his ex”. And that was the reason, why I changed them. I didn’t want to look like his ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend. 

In the Golestan Palace, we encountered for the first time the Persian style of decoration. Mirrors! So many mirrors. Everywhere. I found it absolutely stunning. In the Golestan Palace, mirrors were bigger than in the classic mosque. The reason is, that the leader of the country could see himself there, however, if you enter the mosque, you should not be able to see your face at all, because the most important thing to do in a mosque is to pray and concentrate on yourself and the God. 

In the evening, we went to Azerbaijan Tea house where we spent our Christmas Eve with Iranian food, Iranian people and great traditional music. It was not as cheap as expected, but for 3 courses we paid around 10€ so still #worthy haha. 

DAY 2 (25.12.2019) TEHERAN 

The second day in Teheran was again pretty chilled. In the morning, we visited Azadi Tower. We didn’t go up. We actually just kind of walked around, talked about drugs and ate oranges. We had a pretty good plan for the day, but unfortunately, all propaganda museums were closed. So we just went for a great salad to “Park of artists”.Later I suffered a small shock because I thought, that I lost somewhere 300€. We also wanted to visit some Zoroastrian temple, but again, was closed. We visited some church and went to the bus station. 

 

 

 

DAY 3 (26.12.2019) KASHAN 

We traveled to Kashan with a taxi driver and slept in an amazing hotel called Noghli house. Kashan was really so much calmer in comparison to Teheran… almost no tourists and magic atmosphere. In the night we almost didn’t find a place to eat. In the morning we had lentils for breakfast and talked to some young girl who worked as a tour guide in Iran. She told us that she wants to raise awareness among young people in the world that Iran is a safe place to travel to. Even as a young woman alone. She took a picture of us and posted us to her Instagram profile. We did a free tour in Kashan and our Taxi driver took us later to the Finn garden. He also offered to take us to Abyaneh (also known as a red village because of its red soil and houses) located at the foot of Karkas Mountain. There were almost no tourists, only some Asian group. Which was great but also meant that we couldn’t buy any coffee. Yes. Coffee. I am little bit addicted to coffee which causes while traveling very uncomfortable and tiring experiences. Later we went to Isfahan where our Couchsurfer canceled our stay so we went to some dirty hostel where we met a girl which we met already 2x times before (in Teheran, Kashan and than again in Isfahan). The hostel was recommended to us by our taxi driver. Again we were super hungry and didn’t know the city at all so we went to some random local restaurant where we ordered a looot of food that we were not able to eat. 

DAY 4 ISFAHAN 

I found on the Internet some free tour that I booked. And I promise this tour was the longest tour in my life (and i thought that 4 hours long tour in Tbilisi is the maximum that can happen). It took us 6 hours until we said “goodbye” to our guide. She was there only for us and showed us literally everything that she could. We ended the tour in a place where her boyfriend gave her first kiss. I really loved that girl. She was very honest and did the tour with her full heart without any expectations from our side.

We decided to go for lunch to some random restaurant which looked really horrible from outside and we thought that it will be just some fast food. But it appeared to be the best decision that we made on that trip. The restaurant was beautiful, traditional and no tourists were there. The food was not really vegetarian-friendly but we both were finally satisfied with our choice. And what is the highlight on that lunch? We met Negar and Bahar. We started talking to them because I wanted to try some pudding with meat and asked them if I can try. Later, we talked and they took us for a walk and coffee, I smoked with them cigarettes (which are forbidden in Iran for women on public – so we were fu*king rebellious!) and was really grateful for them. They took us in their car to our hostel where we only changed our stuff and were later picked up by them and invited for dinner. Bahar was a little bit nervous because she didn’t know what to cook for Javi (something vegetarian). The evening there was amazing. We met with Negar’s and Bahar’s husbands and their friends. We drank their homemade wine and some strong alcohol as well. We got actually pretty drunk and it was super fun with them. We played guitar and sang with Javi and did a small concert for them. Bahar did finally “Kuku Sabzi” for us which is a Persian herb baked omelet. It wasn’t tasty for us though in most of the restaurants but Bahar cooked a very tasty one. 

We came back home with a taxi which Negar’s husband ordered for us. 

Isfahan was for me the most surprising place. It looked really like from some Persian fairy tale. And even on Thursday the whole square was full of families having picknick and talking. Another thing that I discovered in Isfahan and I really loved was a rice pudding with date syrup called Fereni. And if you visit Isfahan it is a must to try. I usually never eat sweet stuff but this kind of „sweet“ really amazed me. It is actually not sweet (that was maybe the reason why I liked it that much 😀 ). You make it sweet with the amount of syrup that you use.

 

 

DAY 5 (28.12.2019) ISFAHAN 

We spent the fifth day of our vacation in Isfahan. Javi (as the biggest music lover/freak that I know) wanted to go to the music museum. So we went. I was not that excited about it but finally, it was a quite cool experience because the ticket to the museum included also a guide and live concert with traditional instruments (which was a pretty positive surprise since we thought that we will just observe instruments and go away). We also visited a Christian part of Isfahan called Julfa District where we could see the only Christmas tree in our whole Iran trip. We saw the Vank Cathedral which was interesting in the Iranian context but otherwise “normal” cathedral as we have in Europe. After the cathedral we just went for a walk in the Julfa district, had some sweets and in the evening we went again to walk around beautiful Isfahan. 

DAY 6 (29.12.2019) YAZD 

We took a bus over the night from Isfahan to Yazd and arrived to Yazd in the morning. Ali (our “couchsurfer” – later I will mention him again) picked us up at the bus station and took us to his place. He lived with his friend Magir who danced a lot that morning to some random music. So we joined him. In the afternoon we decided to go to the desert of Yazd because guys offered us. We thought that it was just a friendly offer from them but later it appeared, that it was just an option how to get money from us. Anyway, it was really great there. 

We met there also some Italien guy who was couchsurfing at the Amin’s place (friend of Ali who later wrote me so many hate messages that I needed to block him on WhatsApp). We grilled (didn’t receive enough food and very bad meat), watched stars (thousands and thousands of them and so visible!) and went to sleep early because we wanted to wake up early the next day to see the sunrise. 

DAY 7 (30.12.2019) YAZD 

We woke up, went to the highest hill and watched the sunrise. It was just amazing. I have never seen such a beautiful sunrise in my life. Of course. maybe because it was my first time in the desert too. 😀 We had a small breakfast and went after that with guys to e destroyed city called Kharānaq. Right after we went to the Zoroastrian village and temple called Chak Chak. We were all super hungry but those guys didn’t do any break for us. The third stop that we did was Meybod. Meybod is a castle where Salomon lived. In that city were also huge water storages which were super huge underground and one could see only part of it on the light. 

 

DAY 8 (last year of the year in Europe!!! 🎉) SHIRAZ 

We spent the whole day in Yazd and were visiting towers of silence. We had encountered with towers of silence before In Azerbaijan but there they were not that big like in Yazd. In Yazd it was a really extraordinary experience to see it. The ‘tower of silence‘ is a circular raised structure used by Zoroastrians for exposure of the dead. The common Dakhma originally denoted any place of the dead. … To preclude the pollution of earth or fire, the bodies of the dead are placed atop a tower and so exposed to the sun and to birds of prey. We didn’t know how to get back to the city from those towers so we asked some guys if he would be that kind and take us. He apparently expected us to give him money and was really angry when we “only” paid him the fuel and gave him a looot of nuts (we didn’t have more money to give him but it was still more than enough for one ride).

Our next stop was a Dowlat Abad Garden where we met some very negative girls who told us that Romania is a weird and unfriendly country with no reason. After that, we visited a temple of fire (another one) where Negar picked us up and we spent with them a beautiful evening. We did some “gold shopping” 😀 and drank together pomegranate juice, smoked cigarettes and talked and talked. About gold shopping – Bahar was really surprised that I don’t like gold shopping because she absolutely loved that. Before going for gold shopping, our friends (and I really mean it – they became our friends) took us to some fancy restaurant for a meal. In the evening our “Couchsurfer” Ali asked us for 110 € each for his services. 😀 (We didn’t give him finally that much but still much more than he deserved – the point is, that it was supposed to be couchsurfing and not paid tour etc. -> be careful in Iran while doing couchsurfing!!)

DAY 9 SHIRAZ

And how we celebrated our New Year’s Eve? In a bus!! In the evening, we took an overnight bus to Shiraz ( where I finally got my period which was delayed for 10 days and I got already quite nervous that some pregnancy problems might appear 😀 ). When we arrived to Shiraz, we took a taxi directly to our couchsurfer Forough. Unfortunately, she lived really far from the city center so we decided to stay there only for 1 night and for next night to go to a hostel because it would be really uncomfortable to come back there in the night. Funny thing with Forough was, that 1 week before us slept at her place my old friend Fahd who I met in Madrid with his girlfriend. In the same bad. In Iran. Almost at the same time. Really crazy “coincidence” :D. Actually, I forgot! Before we took the taxi, we were waiting shortly at the train station where we wanted to get some breakfast. Unfortunately, they had only sheep head and tea to offer so we took only tea. Because I am just not used to have sheep head for breakfast. Sheep head is a specialty in Shiraz. So for those who like meat… well, I eat meat and didn’t like it. 

Forough took us and some other guy from Turkey for a tour and showed us all parks in Shiraz. In the evening, we went for dinner with some of her friends to a brand new restaurant which was really beautiful and served fancy stuff. 

DAY 10 PERSEPOLIS, PASARGADAE, NAQSH-E RUSTAM 

When you are already in Shiraz, I would definitely recommend you to go for a day trip to Persepolis, Pasargadae and Naqsh-E Rustam (known as necropolis as well). We went with some taxi driver who stayed with us for the whole day and took as to all three places. Naqsh-e Rustam is an ancient necropolis where several other kings were buried high up in the rocks. A magnificent sight and again the carvings are extremely beautiful. Pasargadae is the tomb of Cyrus the Great. The first of the Achaemenid kings and founder of the Persian empire. Javi was completely amazed by all these ancient buildings. Me not that much by I can understand it. 😀 We had some guide everywhere but I cannot really pay attention to these things and remember just a little. But still always better with a guide than without. For me. I used to be always against guides but since I started to travel more and more, I am always interested in details and even if I remember only half of that what the guide said, it is usually for me much more enjoyable to discover new places. 

DAY 11 PINK MOSQUE 

We slept in a hostel in Shiraz and woke up very early in order to see the Pink Mosque (Nasir al-Mulk Mosque). The Pink Mosque is a place that was recommended to us by everyone who visited Shiraz. If you want to experience those beautiful colours, you have to go very early. Earlier you go, better. From outside, the mosque looks pretty normal and boring but once you enter you will be astonished by its colours and ornaments that are projected on the walls and floor. After the visit to the Pink Mosque we went back to our hostel (which was btw absolutely amazing and traditional) and met there Argentinian Family. The guy was German and his wife was from Argentina. They were there also with their kids who spoke fluently 4 languages and with the mum of that Argentinian woman. They all were really amazing and kind of ideal family for me. I would love to have one day family like that. The woman worked in Goethe Institute and they needed to move as a family every 5 years. We went with this family to the mountains to and old village called Qalat where we had a coffee in a super hipster place (which was completely surprising since in Iran you don’t really find any hipster places with a real espresso:D). I burned there my dress (because I sat at some heater). When we climbed up, we met some guy who produced earrings and jewelry and I bought from him some. We exchanged Instagrams and we have been following each other until now. I was really happy after that trip with the family. They were so honest, so nice. ❤️

DAY 12 PINK LAKE 

We dedicated our last day to a visit of a Pink Lake. The lake was finally not pink at all but it was wonderful again to see families gathering..They were pretty surprised that some tourists are there and were observing us all the time. Than we just went to the airport (to the wrong terminal) and Javi was super stressed. I made him chill down and finally, we managed to find our airplane even if there were some issues with Javi’s ticket. We had on the way back again around 7 hours layover in Istanbul. I was super happy while coming back and didn’t want to go back to Germany after that.