Another mad weekend

If you had visitors staying with you, and they wanted to see a bit more of the country, would you jump on a bus and go to Melbourne for the weekend??

We did.

Well, the equivalent in distance, anyway. On Wednesday evening we packed our sandwiches and spare undies then jumped on a bus to go to Shiraz, 13 hours away, way down in the south of Iran.

We had a great weekend, the five of us. Saman (Iranian), Sepehr (Iranian), Floor (Dutch), Renee (Dutch) and I.

Shiraz is an awesome little city. It's got the same laid back feel as Adelaide. It made me realise that there is a lot of indirect pressure in Tehran. You feel obliged to have the best clothes and the nicest hair. There are people always yelling, (taxi! taxi! Vanak! Vanak!), trying to stuff flyers in your hands, and you've all heard about the traffic. (I love Tehran and all it's craziness, trust me - I just didn't realise that Iran could be different until now).

So yes. We visited a massive garrison-like castle-looking thing (where's my history book?) of the Zand period.

I think the highlight of the trip was visiting Persepolis. It's the ruins of this kingdom, almost 2500 years old. It really is epic, and the history behind it is amazing. The whole kingdom was built by workers, not slaves. Everyone was paid. The kingdom united 23 different nations. The first Charter of Human Rights was written by the guy that built the place.

Alexander the Great had issues with the Persians, so he came and burnt the whole place down. So all that remains are these giant stone pillars - will upload pictures to FB soon if I have the chance.

The rest of the trip was pretty laid back. Other highlights include:

Eating sheep brain and eye for breakfast. Yep - they have these places called 'head cookers' where they boil sheep heads, and then you get to eat everything. I nearly vomited. The brain had the texture of cream cheese. Sepehr lied to me about what I was eating until after I'd eaten the eye. Bleuch.

Sneaking out to buy breakfast. We missed breakkie at the hotel, so we girls decided to get it for ourselves. (Normally we have our very well intentioned caretakers with us at all times). We found ourselves a bakery and bought fresh sangek (stone bread), then made friends with a shopkeeper and grabbed the rest (fetta, sour-cherry jam, mango juice etc etc).

Changing hotel rooms because there was something seriously wrong with the sewage, which made our entire room stink to high heaven... ugh.

Yes, must history annd hilarity to be had. The only downer the whole trip was on the last day, when Floor and I became terribly sick. We were both just so ill, and the bus trip did not facilitate any kind of recovery at all. But after sleeping it off for most of today, I think I'm good to go.

until next time, Khodafez