Author archive
18 May 2003
Above: Abbasi Hotel courtyard. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons. Shaking Minarets Kim didn’t sleep well due to the traffic noise. We changed room after breakfast to a quieter one. Kim also had a cold, so wasn’t particularly happy. We took a taxi to Chehel Sotoun, a pavilion with forty columns set within a park, but it […]
17 May 2003
Around the Square Kim’s mum, Fiona, rang and woke us up. She had got the time wrong by an hour and rang too early as a result. We decided to look for alternative hotel. We didn’t have to go far, in fact, just across the road to Persia Hotel. We got a room with a […]
16 May 2003
We had breakfast with Daniel and took it easy this morning. We’re flying from Shiraz to Esfahan in the evening and are just absorbing the experience of being in Kerman, having done the must-sees of the area. About 1100 we went for a walk to find the Church of St Simon the Zealot but we […]
15 May 2003
The hotel buffet breakfast was similar to those we’ve had so far on this trip, plus crispy dried cake-bread and biscuits. Last night, we had organised with the hotel receptionist Hussein for a driver to take us to Persepolis. He said he knew a good driver which he had known for 34 years that had […]
14 May 2003
Ali from the hotel had arranged our bus ticket from Kerman to Shiraz, so it was a stress-less breakfast followed by a short taxi ride to the bus station for our long bus-ride to Shiraz. At the station we ran into the man whom we met at the bazaar, who wanted to know about migration […]
13 May 2003
Above: Bam’s town centre. It was our sleep-in today, waking up at 0830 before taking a cold shower and having breakfast. Akbar, the owner of the guesthouse introduced himself after returning from Kerman. He was a teacher in English and Persian literature. We wandered around Bam’s town but there wasn’t much to captivate us. […]
12 May 2003
We reached Akbar Guest House in Bam around 1300. It was like a little oasis within their compound. We bought some snacks in place of lunch. It was a social place at the guesthouse. We chatted to Daniel, a Swedish ex-military guy who raves about Sydney and Australia, having been there for the Olympics in […]
12 May 2003
It was a more civilized wake-up at 0700 for breakfast of greasy fried egg, bread sticks, jam and coffee. Our organised transport turned out to be the driver which booted us out of the taxi at the airport yesterday for whatever reason due to communication difficulties. His job for the day was to take us […]
11 May 2003
Above: Mosaic work at Jame Mosque, Kerman. We rose early at 0600 and were down for breakfast at 0700. It was the same breakfast except the jam was now a carrot jam which was new to me, but I liked it! We were in a taxi to the airport at 0800. We spotted a few […]
10 May 2003
Golestan Palace We woke to another beautiful day in Tehran with clear blue skies. The hotel breakfast was a good introduction to the Persian breakfast. Nan bread (not like the Indian tandoor one but thinner and somewhat cardboardy), egg, white cheese spread, butter and jam. [Edit: while I enjoyed it, little did I know that […]