Beautiful Isfahan

We strolled around Isfahan today. We started off at the main Nagsh-e Jahan Square. It’s huge, about 500 meters in length. Enough place for all sorts of fountains, gardens, and a polo court where there actually was a game on! Most Iranian tourists sit on the grass and picnic there. For us sitting and people-watching is not always so easy: within 2 minutes there is usually a small crowd of Iranians around us wanting to chat, take pictures and extend invitations to their hometowns in the Iranian hinterland.
We thus moved on into the Sheikh Lotfollah mosque. It’s not really being used today anymore - and serves more as a monument than as a place of worship. Still it was impressive to see.

In true German fashion, we then went on a self-guided walking tour from the main square through the bazaar and to the Jameh Mosque (main mosque) of Isfahan. This was truly impressive! Like so many places in Iran, this is also a UNESCO world heritage site. Different than most other parts of Isfahan, there were very few people inside the mosque and we really enjoyed the tranquility.

Pretty tired, we made our way back, got ourselves some Turkish honey (“Gaz”) and then relaxed in a coffee shop near the main square. Nice coffee shops are few and far between. The culture here is more to sit indoors in traditional tea houses, probably due to the heat from the sun. But we found this coffee shop that had outdoor seating in a nice backyard and were quite happy with our find :-) (That’s not to say that the teahouses aren’t nice. But sometimes the craving for a cappuccino gets too strong :-))

For dinner, we joined a couple of German and Catalonian tourists for a fancy meal in the Armenian quarter and then some tea in the courtyard of the Abbasi luxury hotel. The courtyard is vast - a very nice place to hang out :-)Lue lisää