Tehran

My Turkish Airlines flight Brussels-Istanbul was late – gates closed 5 minutes before I managed to run to the gate. Markus left for Tehran alone. I slept 2.5 hours in 5 star hotel and arrived some 13 hours later.

After arrival I rushed to buy a visa. At first is needed to buy local insurance (some 15 eur). The counters are nearby.  I presented my letter of invitation with reference number, paid and in some 15 minutes the visa was in my passport. Markus spent for this procedure more than hour and I more or less 30 minutes.

We bought rials for 100 eur to be able to pay for 1^st day expenses. Exchange rate difference between airport and city was pretty small. It took for us some time to find right area in the city to exchange currency. When you find one, there are several or many nearby.

We did not know about new option of Iranian tourist card and we brought quite a lot cash with us. In many places in Iran you can pay by card, but only with local ones. Except few carpet shops who had also international card terminal. after our trip we discovered tourist card and I will add information about it (from TripAdvisor) as it is useful information.

" It is a card in Iranian Rial which is issued for tourists against foreign currencies received from them with designated expiry date and it can be used in whole Iranian banking system. A Tourist Card is given to clients with exclusive passwords. There are two passwords for each card. First password is to be used when the card is used to buy by POS and the second password is used for internet buying. Both passwords can be changed by the holder of the card.



Specifications of Tourist Card

1- It can be used through whole Iranian banking system



2- Cash can be withdrawn only in BMI ATMs.



3- Funds can not be transferred to Tourist Card



4- Cards can be used to buy through internet, their passwords can be changed and funds can be transferred from Tourist Card to other cards.



5- The remaining cash in Tourist Cards can be converted to foreign currencies and paid to customers.



6- The expiry date of Tourist Card will be the date when clients’ visas are expired.



7- The limit of charging these cards in $ 5,000



8- Customers can be informed about the remaining balance of Tourist Cards through Bank Melli Iran’s website (www.bmi.ir), all ATMs throughout the country and all POS systems.



9- Customers can take billing statements and be informed about the breakdown of their Tourist Card transactions in BMI ATMs."
We did not manage to buy local SIM card on airport – it was closed for a lunch. Later it took some time to find a place to buy it. So, it is recommended to buy it on airport. We bought 5 GB internet time and call time for 600 000 rial. For 2 weeks it was enough for two.  

As it was Saturday lunch time there was not so much traffic and I was in hotel in some 40 minutes.  Hotel was located in pretty good area but it was far away to be 3 star hotel. In European terms it was rather a hostel. But it was clean enough and many our sites were in walking distance. If you are looking for real 3 or 4 star hotel, be prepared to pay over 100 Eur. For the last day we did not manage to book a hotel – so we stayed in Qom, what was not so bad option. Hotels there are cheaper but not sp easy to find a good hotel. During high season hotels in main cities should be booked ahead.

First day we decided to walk around leaving sites for next day.

Tehran metro is very good to move around. On rush hours it is crowded, so with rucksacks it might be a challenge (we took taxi to get to railway station).  I would advise to print metro map out and to bring with you (http://www.mapsofworld.com/metro-maps/asia/tehran.html).

We took a metro to Valiasr Square and took a long walk on this Tehran high-street. In Iran it is pretty strange arrangement for shops. You see several quarters only electronic shops, after several quarters only cloth and so on. We did not find any place to exchange cash or to buy SIM card. We got hungry and we started to look for a restaurant. We could not find any. Later we discovered there were plenty of them on the other side of the street. As we wanted a lamb shaschlik, it took pretty long time to find a proper place. At the end, the lamb was great (one of the best we got in Iran).  

We paid a visit to Armenian Church – Sarkis Cathedral It was closed and we discovered later that Armenian Church in Isfahan was more interesting.

The next day we visited Golestan palace. It is nice place with nice inner square. The mirror mosaics were something new for us. We visited also several small museums there, but as usual in Iran, museums are pretty poor / not too much to see. So, next time we would skip them.

National museum of Iran was slight disappointment (like most of Iranian museums). You can skip Islamic part. But in pre-Islamic part we found very interesting pieces of pottery (dated 4000-5000 years BC) and remains of man from salt mine. In Islamic period part the best piece was Paradise door.

The jewellery museum is definitely a top museum in Iran. It is small (it took around 45 min) but interesting. Keep in mind that it is required to deposit all your belongings. I was afraid about my big amount of cash, but it was safe.

Highlight of our Tehran visit was trekking in Darband. We followed TripAdvisor recommendations and went on Friday. It was crowded but you can see all kind of local people. The path is alongside of small river and there are many nice restaurants/shisha places. You can enjoy shisha or meal sitting on the platform on the river. We stopped trekking in last restaurant to enjoy shisha and water melon.   

After trekking we went to Saad Abad Complex. It was a nice walk in huge park. White Palace and Green Palace are both worth to visit. From other museums only dishware and automobile museums where worth to visit.

From that we saw,  last shah lived compared to other royal’s pretty modest life.

As a summary: Tehran has crazy traffic and air pollution. It depends from your interests, but we would say two and half days in Tehran is enough.