Yes, the city where wine was once the best in the Middle East is now a totally alcohol-free area, as the whole of Iran, so no chance for any wine tasting. Still, Shiraz and its surroundings have some of the most beautiful sights you can see in all Iran, such as Shah-e-Charagh Shrine Complex, Nasir-al-Molk Mosque and the ancient city of Persepolis, an hour away by car. After Yazd and Esfahan, Shiraz comes next in terms of sihghtseeing in Iran. We arrived in Shiraz around 5 in the evening after a 6-hour bus ride from Yazd. From the bus station we took a taxi to Golshan Hostel, close to the main sights of the city. First problem: the taxi driver dropped us in a totally different place. Yes, it was called Golshan but there was no hostel there, so after a few phone calls by some shopkeepers we took another taxi and finally we got to the place. This practice is quite common in Iran: You take a taxi, ask to go somewhere and normally they have no clue where the place is, so they keep asking and asking until they finally find it. But it doesn't always work.
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Unfortunately we only spent 2 days in Yazd, but could easily have spent at least one week. Yazd has everything you may expect from Iran: Mosques, shrines, a beautiful mudbrick Old Town, a bazar, the best accomodation in the country and even different food than kebab! Definitely, Yazd is the best place to visit in Iran! With the feeling of having wasted a couple of days and a few more dollars in Toudeshk, we jumped to a 3 hour bus which took us to our next destination: Yazd. We didn't actually know much about Yazd before visiting it. You read about Esfahan, Shiraz and Persepolis as the main tourist destinations in the country, but not that much about Yazd, which makes it a beautiful surprise when you start exploring it, and I can tell after having spent a couple of days there, that it was the place in Iran I liked the most.
Esfahan is probaby the most famous and the most visited of the Iranian cities. After much reading about it and after spending 4 days there it definitely is a must in any Iranian trip due to its many sights, although you can get a bit disappointed because most of the places are right now undergoing some renovations and the government has transformed some parts of the city into a "too European looking" places. Anyway, you'll love Esfahan, for sure. What you can for sure skip is a trip to the nearby desert village of Toudeshk. Nothing there but dust and stones and a nice but nothing special guesthouse. After a 3 hour bus ride from Kashan, we arrived at Esfahan bus station. According to Google maps, there's metro in Esfahan, but that's totally false, so we took a local bus to get to our hostel. In Iran you cannot book any hostel in advance through any of the major Internet booking sites (you can book expensive hotels through Iranian sites or by phone), so the procedure it's always the same: show up at the place and hope there's some bed available. Most of the time it works.
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AuthorBorn in Barcelona and raised in Olot, I've been interested in travelling since I was a child, when every Summer I crossed Spain from coast to coast with my parents. Listening to my siblings' stories about their trips all over the world also helped, as well as watching Around the World with Willy Fog on TV :)
As I grew up, and while I was still studying... read more
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