Trip to Shiraz July 2010

Trip to Shiraz 2010-07-20

After Wijb stayed for a week in Tehran, then we decided to go on a trip to Shiraz.
I wanted to show part of Iranian culture and Old Persian Empire to Wijb to have something nice and cultural in his mind from Iran, on his first impression.

I thought the best way for me and Wijb is to be on tour, so I have got tickets for Wednesday 9th to 16th July.
Starting at 5 am on Wednesday and got to the airport and after a long trip with one our delay arrived to Shiraz airport. Our tour leader had made a great effort to find everybody and put us all together in a mini-van going toward the hotel.
On the way to the hotel, we passed from two big historical parks with history of couple of hundred years.
Shiraz is famous for beauty of its parks; poem and poetry. Summers are not the best season to visit, but during autumn and spring all streets are full of orange trees and aromas spread all over of the town.
Anyhow, our hotel was a four star located in center of the city but far away from traffic. The good part was around hotel we could find couple of local restaurant which was a chance for Wijb to try out local cuisines as well. We got some kind of soup and some Kebabs cooked in a traditional way.
In three and half day we stayed there. We visited Saadi and Hafez tombs that both are among the most famous from 6th century, in Iranian literature; their poems have been translated into so many languages in the world.
There are few castles inside the city left which worth watching.
The most spectacular place which has artists, historical background ad unfortunately partly left is Persepolis and Pasakard, both defined as world heritage and are symbol of old Persian empire.
These two places are 60 km far from city and it took us an hour to get there. It was pity that heat was annoying, but listening to the historical histories and knowing more about cultural heritance was great though.