Dār osh Shafā’

The German-Austrian-Catalan tourist group got going again :-) With the 6 of us, you have to know that it makes it hard to cross any kind of public space without having one of us being stopped and asked for a picture. But we got to see quite a bit:

- Zoroastrian temple with an eternal flame 🔥 burning since ~470 AD - we only got 5 of us on the picture and the second Anna is missing

- Masjed-e Jame (Main Mosque) - the girls having to take a separate entrance and borrowing chadors. 👻 While Iranian religious teaching emphasizes that the chador is a protection for women “like the oyster protects the pearl”, we actually felt like rather sweaty women. A nice surprise was the presence of a calligraphy artist and both Annas got their name written in Persian calligraphic script

- the shrine of a religious scholar (which was undergoing construction - thus the „holy repair” street sign). It also had a variety of praying beads on a rake, it looked very nice

- coffee stop at a nice restaurant court: great coffee ☕️ and pomegranate juice 🥤 also a fantastic escape from the searing sun

- walking the old streets of Yazd: almost everything is made of reddish-brown brick and wind towers (called badgirs) help to ventilate rooms and courtyard by channeling in air from outside through intricate systems

- traditional house: only Bertram and David went there while the rest had already left: it was not really impressive and the collection of western women pictures on the walls looked rather creepy

We are now back in the hotel to escape the afternoon heat - it really is the desert here in Yazd and rain falls as rarely as 3 times a YEAR!

In the evening we will go out together to another traditional Iranian restaurant with roof top seating.

Happy Easter 🐣 to all of you back home!Read more