TEHRAN - AGAIN

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ESFAHAN TO TEHRAN, MARCH 10, 2017

Yesterday afternoon, we went to a tea shop which is very characteristic of where young people congregate. This tea shop happened to be in an antique shop, so it was very interesting. After having tea. we walked to the bazaar. We saw a very interesting demonstration of color block printing. 
They use all natural eyes on cotton fabric. Some hand painting is done at the end after the block colors are applied. The fabric is then steamed to set the colors. The result is quite beautiful. We bought a tablecloth which we really liked. We then walked through part of the bazaar which was very crowded. We only stayed about an hour and then came back to the hotel.

Today is another travel day. We are driving from Esfahan to Tehran. It will take about 8 hours. But we are going to make several stops along the way. The first stop was at a little mountain town, Abyaneh. This town is at about 8000 feet and is a Unesco World Heritage site. This town was not found until just before the Islamic Revolution. No one knew about it. There were no major roads leading to it. Now it is a tourist site. There are many old buildings and beautiful scenery of the mountains.

From Abyaneh we went to lunch at a new restaurant in Kazan. It was very good. But the closer we get to Tehran the more tour groups that we encounter. We then stopped at a beautiful example of the Persian Garden, Fin. It is a beautiful site with fours houses at the sides of the park. A very famous prime minister, Kasir Nabir was assassinated here in the 1800’s. The water is running all through the garden in beautiful turquoise lined channels. There are little fish in the ponds that feed the channels. The Persians took this as a sign that the water was pure. There as also a bath located on the grounds that had a public part and a part for the royal family.

The rest of the day was spent driving to Tehran. We made several stops along the way “nature stops” and one stop at a shopping center which was beautiful where we had ice cream. We finally arrived in Tehran at about 7:30. It took us an hour and a half to get to our hotel. We ate dinner at 8:45. It was a long day.

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