Last day in Tehran

Our final day in Tehran involved a metro ride to the end of the line - Tajrish, at the foothills of the mountains that border the city. Here we approached the more low key Tajrish Bazaar, quieter and friendly we enjoyed wandering the alleys. 

 

 In the vegetable section there were mincing machines cutting up supermarket sized plastic bags of herbs. Andrew was invited to have a taste of some of the herbs. There were plenty of people with plastic bag in each hand heading off to create something tasty with them.  We watched oils being extracted and put into bottles. We needed some more sesame oil so we got a small bottle ourselves.

 

He was also motivated to purchase fruit leather, premium nut mix and a dozen mini-doughnuts covered in chocolate.  We HAD to eat them there and then. So we ended up sitting on a wall on the side of the street while Andrew smeared chocolate around his face.  While he ate the lions share I did have some :-)

 

 

We returned to the other Grand Bazaar to return to the Moslem restaurant and to order the dish we were supposed to have ordered the previous day. Tahchin, layers of rice and saffron and chicken slow cooked so the juices drip down.  It was worth the journey back.

In a nearby park we wandered through and came across a bird enclosure with ostriches and flamingos and saw plenty of people relaxing and enjoying picnics/BBQ on the grass

 

 

On our journey we walked past the former American Embassy which is now a private museum open a few days a year and is styled as 'US den of espionage' with plenty of anti-US murals and signs.

We headed to the railway station for our 4pm train to Shiraz.  In fact we headed there twice as halfway there Andrew asked if I had put my bag in the boot? I said no.  So we turned the taxi around and he raced back to the hotel. Turns out my suitcase was in the boot, but Andrew thought I had another bag.  So crisis averted and we headed back to the railway station for the 15 hour overnight sleeper 900km journey south...