Zanjan

So when I last left you, we were in Tabriz. Yesterday we jumped on a bus to Zanjan (using the time to publish the last post). We arrived here in the earlier afternoon to discover the two hotels we had in mind had substantially higher prices than reported in the LP. In fact, we are pretty sure whoever wrote the LP entry ended up confusing Tomen and Rials because the quoted pricing makes little sense.
As we were searching for another mentioned in the guide we were rescued by two lovely men asking if we were looking for a hotel and assuring us there was one much nicer than where we were heading. Iranian warmth and hospitality winning out again because we were brought to a great little hotel, run by a young, enterprising Iranian with a reasonable level of English who has done everything to make our stay comfortable - arranging a car for our day trip, exchanging money, etc.
After dumping our things, I plotted out a taster of downtown Zanjan - very loose but all within a km or two of the hotel. We started by walking through the bazaar looking for a restaurant known for its Dizi Sangi (or dizzy sandwich), a rich lamb stew with various accoutrements and a ritual for how you eat it. We thought we stumbled across it but instead found something even better.
After seeing a sign with an image of the stew pointing down an alley off the bazaar, we walked into a tiny stand which was effectively a kitchen with two narrow benches. The rear one was taken up by some men already so we slipped into the one on the side wall. We asked for Dizi and after some confusion found out it had run out (or he doesn't make it or... well, whatever it was, it wasn't available). In the meantime I'd eyed off what he'd made for one of the other men - some shakshuka (or, omelette, as he called it). So we greedily pointed at it and asked for what he was having.
We settled in with some chai as tomatoes, mushrooms and shallots all got chopped and fried in front of us. It was served with a huge plate of wager thin bread which you form into little bite size parcels with some of the eggy tomatoey mixture. It was hands down the best meal we've had in Iran (so good, in fact, we went back today!). We quickly became the star attraction with people heartily welcoming us to Iran, wanting to know if we had babies (no), had been to <insert hometown here> (no), if we had Skype or whatsapp working (no) and if we'd be in selfies with them (yes)!

I have no idea what made the shakshuka so much better than any I've tried before - might be just the quality of the produce because I tried to watch what he was doing and there was nothing exotic about it. We washed it down with chai from the large samovar and dogh (like Turkish Ayran - salted yoghurt drink with mint in it).
At the end we were taarof-ed for the first time, being told not to pay and having to heartily insist we would be paying. It was a crazily low $2.50 for the whole meal... especially crazy considering how much better it was than anything else we've had.
After lunch we wandered around the bazaar some more and made our way to the Rakhtshoot Khaneh - a stone laundry and washouse that a local businessman built over a spring for the women of Zanjan to use for free. You'll have to excuse the lack of photos for the afternoon as I only had my big camera with me and I can't do anything with those images until I get home. Don't worry, your usual channel will surely supply a good variety.
We ended the day back at a teahouse in the bazaar where we sat drank tea and finally found some Dizi Sangi. The stew comes in clay pots, you pour the broth into a bowl leaving the meat and veg to cool down. The broth was beyond delicious, so rich and beautifully cooked. You tear up bits of the flat bread to hearten the broth while you drink it. The meat and veg then get mashed with a special mashing stick you're given and the subsequent paste is smeared on to pieces of the thin bread. It was lovely but the other table (and other descriptions I've read say it comes with herbs and leaves to flavour it but we couldn't seem to get ours)!

On our way back to the hotel we stopped by the mosque, which was lovely. The evening call to prayer was going out and families sat in the forecourt while men went through ablutions. Tom made yet more friends while I wandered around with the camera!
Today we had organised to go out to Takht-e Soleiman and Soltaniyeh by car - it ended up being a big driving day, leaving at 8amand getting back at 4pm. We had been going to head to Qazvin a day early but after so many hours in a car neither of us felt like sitting on a bus right away. Also the shakshuka was calling us again!
The morning drive out to Takht-e Soleiman was spectacular. It's a UNESCO World Herotage site up in the top of the mountains. We passed quarries and lorries abdcable cars of rocks on the way with mountains on every direction. It was hard to grab good images of it from the taxi though.
Takht-e Soleiman was originally one of the most important temples for the Zoroastrians - so we're talking old, we're talking 5th Century BC old. And before that there's archeological evidence of other human activity as well. The centre of the site is a turquoise artesian lake pouring forth about 50L/second. It has steep sides with the edges being around 40-50m deep and Tom said over 100m deep at the centre. It's on a slight rise within a huge basin at the top of the mountains. It became known as Solomon's Throne when the Arab Conquest threatened the site - the locals claiming Solomon had spent time there (and denying its Zoroastrian significance).
It was stunning, though the light was brutally bright making photos hard. Especially as these are jpgs so I can't process them more subtly. You'll just have to wait (and hope) that I got some that can be salvaged!
From there we headed back to Zanjan and out the other side to see Soltaniyeh - a reasonably well preserved blue domed mosque. Though we didn't know it was full of scaffolding inside so couldn't explore it fully.Read more