Iran!!!

Tuesday 25th August.... 3:30am...

We arrived into Tehran, the only two foreigners on our flight. We walked towards the visa desk with trepidation and horror stories running through our mind (we'd recently heard about an Australian guy in transit who was detained for 2 days in an abandoned hotel, and others who were immediately deported...) but that is the risk you take turning up without a visa to a country that is notoriously hard to get a visa for....
Anyway the two guys at the visa desk handed us two forms to fill in, when it came to the all important 'endorsements' section we wrote the name of a hotel we'd made a tentative booking with online, the day before. Usually you should have a 'visa code' from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The guy took our passports, gave us a wry smile and told us to wait.
Ten minutes passed by, we were extremely fidgety and kept looking at each other like 'what next?'. Suddenly a tall smiley guy approached jangling a set of keys (to the abandoned hotel???), but it turned out he was the banker, he opened up a little window next to the visa window and said 'that will be $100 Euros please.' Clearly this meant we were getting the visa's (they wouldn't make you pay for the abandoned hotel surely...?). We paid and were asked to wait again... then the visa guy came back pretty quickly and hallelujah! He had in hand our passports with shiny green visa's pasted inside!
We were met at the airport by our friend Ali (from Newcastle) and his sister Nasim, which was very kind indeed considering the hour and we were driven back to Nasim's apartment through a very quiet, early morning Tehran.

After a few hours of sleep at our lovely hosts apartment (Nasim & Arash), Nikki played tour guide and took us out to see some sights of Tehran. First stop was the beautiful summer (i think) palaces of the ousted Shah of Iran. The opulence of the rooms was pretty impressive... check out this ceiling below....

The sparkly stuff is tiny little mirrors all in intricate patterns. Below is one of the smaller cottages that one of the Shah's sister lived in. The whole property is made up of huge sloping gardens with buildings scattered all over the place. We also saw a really interesting photography exhibition about these two brothers from Iran who traveled all over the world in the 60's. There were even photos of them in the outback with Aborigines! I was impressed.
oil money... buys you all the tiny mirrors you can need... and more!
Next Nikki took us to the local bazaar next for a look around and then to a shopping mall with some seriously good bargains! Everything seemed to be luxury brand name, but in Negin's words 'just assume its all fake'.... they were good quality fakes though! Nick bought some shirts and I bought some long dress/ tops that were 'Iran suitable' so I didn't get arrested.
In the evening we were invited to a dinner party at Ali's parents house. Negin and Ali's families were there and some more friends they hadn't seen since their last visit.

Wednesday 26th

Today we took in some more Palaces, these ones in downtown Tehran, we caught the Tehran subway there, which has a 'womens only car', and after being groped on the trams in Turkey I thought this was a fabulous idea. The Palaces were stunning albeit a little run down.

Ali, Nikki and I at one of the sparkly palaces (you can't really tell Nikki is wearing a hijab in this pic but she is).

One of the highlights was an underground part that used to be bathing area that had been turned into a gallery. There were pictures of one of the Shah's and his hideous, hideous manly wifes. Like I mean this guy has the pick of all of Iran... and really you have to try to find an ugly Persian woman, but still he has a brood of about 11 truly ugly women.
The underground art gallery

Next we headed over to check out a huge bazaar also in the downtown area. It was huge and seemed to have just about everything you could possibly need from bed spreads to dried apricots. We were all pretty hungry and thirsty (Ramadan) so we got a taxi back to the car... on the way I took photos of the British Embassy as we drove past. We found out later someone got arrested or something for doing that.
Tehran's main bazaar
Nick, Nikki and Nasim getting our delicious pomegranate juices...

Nick Enjoying the Pomegranate juice

We had lunch at Ali's parents house and then we went swimming in the building swimming pool (separately of course- they even have a female lifeguard on during the ladies times and a male one during the mens times). There is an Olympic pool, a jacuzzi, a steam bath and a sauna... it was really nice :) This evening we headed out for dinner but on the way we got Pomegranate juice and were serenaded to by an accordion player at the juice stand. The Pomegranate juice was sooo nice we had a semi frozen one with Pomegranate ice cream and fresh pomegranate on top. We had dinner and after dinner some local guys had set up a soft toy stand on Ali's bonnet. They looked a bit put out when we said we wanted the car back...

Accordion man serenading us.
Street scene, North Tehran

Iranian fruit straps. Mmmmm... berries. Nikki said this is all made very un- hygienically and its left outside in the dust all day, so we weren't allowed to get any but it looked yummy.
Waiting at a little street cafe, Arash and Nasim our hosts (along with Ali and Nikki of course). I finally found someone smaller than Amie and Susan! Nasim is tiny!!
Ali's car covered in stuffed toys....hehe

Stay tuned for further Persian adventures.....