My expectations for Shiraz were maybe a bit high. I heard so many nice things about this city, from gardens to poems to Hafez; I kind of expected a green oasis with chilled people and flowers in their hair.
In the bus to Shiraz, an older Iranian couple who lives now in the US took care of me with apples and boiled eggs.
When I arrived, I was chased by taxi drivers as if there was no tomorrow. They followed me everywhere until I finally got a Snapp (Iranian Uber) and managed to get to my hotel. The receptionist greeted me with a professional impoliteness, quickly introduced me to all the tours they offer and took my passport until I pay for the accommodation.
A friendly hotelier then guided me to my room and after a bit of rest I decided to check out the city a bit and found one of the bigger shrines of Iran. It was open so I waited for my chador and a cheerful female volunteer from the international affairs office who guided me around. From her, I learned that women choose a black chador because it’s more fashionable, but it would be better to wear a colourful or white one (in Mekka you are only allowed to wear white).
Also, the twelfth Imam is looking for Jesus Christ and once they find each other they will come back to earth again and everybody will live happily ever after as a Muslim (if I understood everything correctly). You learn new things every day.
It was definitely worth it to spend my evening there. Next I went to the Bazar where I saw the last treasure hunters before it was closing down and I called it a day.
The next day I met some of my fellow travellers from my trip to the desert and since I didn’t have anything better to do I joined them on a trip through the city. They met a local Iranian the day before who showed us around the city and took us to some gardens of the city. The first one was free but I was asked anyways by some angry-looking gardener for some money to visit. The others were all fenced off and cost 200.000 rial entrance fee, no matter how big or small or beautiful the garden is. For me, Shiraz was a lot of busy and dirty streets surrounded by entrance fee over entrance fee. I visited the pink mosque, which was beautiful, but after being inside the Sagrada Familia a few times it couldn’t knock me off my feet. Some of the highlights were a beautiful garden a bit outside of the city centre and the Saadi tomb where I got a bit of that poetic feeling everybody cheers about when talking about Shiraz. At night I went with my new temporary travel mates to the highest point of Shiraz to see the city by night. For the next morning, I booked a tour to Persepolis.
