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Esfahan. The most beautiful city in Iran, perhaps even the most beautiful city in the world. We were here for three days and we still have the idea we have only seen a few of the sights of this marvelous city. At our first day, we started with a visit of the Friday Mosque. This mosque is like a museum of Islamic Architecture over a thousand years. From the coming of Islam to Iran, every dynasty has added new constructions to the mosque, without destroying the older things. The oldest part was originally a Zoroastrian fire temple.

Some people say the Friday Mosque is the most interesting building in all of Iran. Yes, the Imam Mosque is more beautiful, but this combination of different styles of architecture makes it unique in the world. We made enough photographs to give this mosque its own page, but we decided to keep it down to two pictures on this page.

Our first day in Esfahan was a Friday. On this day of the week, most of the sights of Esfahan are closed, except (curiously enough) the Friday Mosque, the Shaky Minarets where it was too crowded to enjoy the shaking, the Zoroastrian fire temple, the Christian churches in the Jolfa district and the bridges across the river. 

So, this enumeration of open-things-on-a-friday describes about what we saw the first day.

There are about 13 churches in Esfahan’s Jolfa district. This district is where many Christians, most of them Armenians, live. The most famous church is the Vank Cathedral, which is not only a church but also a museum. Anyway, the Vank was closed after all, so we went to see another one called the Miriam-church.

Before the Arabs invaded Iran, there were many fire temples in Esfahan. The Arabs destroyed them all, except this one on top of a hill. We can’t claim the Arabs were wrong, it is a quite a climb. We can imagine that after you have climbed this hill, you won’t have any energy left to destroy things.

Esfahan has many bridges across the Zayandeh river. This Zayandeh is a very strange river. It originates from a spring in the Zagros mountains, then runs for 400 km through the Esfahan province and finally disappears into the ground of the Dasht-é Kavir desert.

The best known bridge of Esfahan is the Khaju bridge. It has two levels of terraces overlooking the water. On a Friday evening, the bridge is crowded with young Esfahani’s having fun.

The bazaar of Kashan is one of the most beautiful in Iran. It has many other interesting buildings inside it, like mosques, caravanserais, water storages and of course the fantastic mill you see on the picture above. The miller, when he’s not working, is standing in the streets of the bazaar, getting tourists’ attention for his mill (and a few rials).

The Borujerdis Old House is a 19th century merchant house. The building itself is a masterpiece and so are the paintings inside by the famous Iranian painter Kamal ol-Molk. The house is famous for its bad-girs, towers designed to lead the high winds to streetlevel, thus keeping the temperature low: very useful in the hot desert.

We mentioned the rosewater before. The famous rosefields of Qamsar are near to Kashan, so you’ll see rosewater stalls everywhere. This is one of the stalls, just outside of the Fin gardens. Rosewater is used in a lot of Iranian desserts, but the spaghetti-like ice cream is our favorite.

We asked this man if his name was Lulletje, but very predictable he didn’t understand this Dutch joke. It doesn’t translate very good in English and we didn’t even try it in Farsi.

The Shahzadeh shrine is maybe the only Islamic building in Iran with a pointy roof instead of a dome.

The Fin gardens are one of the highlights of Kashan. This garden, with pools and fountains among fruit trees, has a wonderful lazy atmosphere. The fountains get their water from a natural spring. After flowing through the gardens, the water is used as drinkingwater.

Kashan’s architectural sights include:

Agha Bozorg Mosque.
Boroujerdi ha Residence.
Tabatabaie Residence
Ameri-Ha (Amerian) House
Abbasian House
Sharifian House
Al-e-Yaseen House
Sultan Amir shrine and bath
40 Dokhtaran Fortress
Pirouz Nahavandi/Abu-Lu’lu’ah Shrine (the assassin of Islam’s second Caliph)
Fin Garden
Sialk ziggurat
Ghal’eh jalali
Kashan Bazaar
Timcheh Amin-o-dowleh

 Jerash the Romans (strange guys) had a great time. The Roman excavations are of about the same size as the modern part of the town. It is really amazing to see so MANY columns. You can imagine Jerash is sometimes called the Pompeii of the East.

Probably because of its location (only 40 kms from Amman), Jerash has even more visitors than Petra.

Besides columns, there are also two amfitheatres and a couple of temples (with columns, of course).

The Roman famous for the wall between England and Scotland, Hadrian, has built an arch here, called the Hadrian Arch. To see the Arch, you’ll have to go to Jordan yourself, because we didn’t include this picture.

This fascinating city makes a great day-trip from Amman, particularly in spring, when the wildflowers are in bloom. The drive will take you less than an hour, but will transport you 2000 years back in time.

Within the remaining city walls, archeologists have found the ruins of settlements dating back to the Neolithic Age, indicating human occupation of this location for more than 6500 years. This is not surprising, as the area is ideally suited for human habitation. Jerash has a year-round supply of water, while its altitude of 500 meters gives it a temperate climate and excellent visibility over the surrounding low-lying areas.

The history of Jerash is a blend of the Greco-Roman world of the Mediterranean basin and the ancient traditions of the Arab Orient. Indeed, the name of the city itself reflects this interaction. The earliest Arabic/Semitic inhabitants named their village Garshu. The Romans later Hellenised the former Arabic name into Gerasa, and at the end of the 19th century, the Arab and Circassian inhabitants of the small rural settlement transformed the Roman Gerasa into the Arabic Jerash

Shiraz is known as the poetic capital of Iran, because two of the greatest poets of the world, Hafez (1324-1391) and Sa’di (1209-1291), come from this city. Sa’di, the traveler saw a great part of the world before he finally settled in Shiraz, where he died. Hafez on the other hand, except for one very short journey, never even left his city.

So it’s logical we start our stay in Shiraz with a visit to their mausolea. At the mausoleum of Sa’di it is unnervingly quiet, the door is open but there’s nobody there. We discover why when we arrive at the mausoleum of Hafez. Today, it happens to be Hafez Memorial Day and every Iranian who loves poetry has come here to commemorate the great poet while reading, reciting or listening to some of his poems.

For us, this is a very strange experience. We can’t imagine so many young people would come to a Vondel Day in Holland. Iranians must truly love their poetry. Our Iranian guide Shervin surprises us, he recites a beautiful poem of Sa’di, by heart.

When it’s almost dark, we go to the Shrine of Shah Cheragh. This is the tomb of Seyed Amir Ahmad, the brother of Imam Reza, the 8th Imam. The outside of the Shrine looks absolutely fabulous in the dark. The Shrine is a Holy Place and an important place for pilgrimage, but it is open to non-Muslims, as long as you ask permission first and under the condition that women wear a chador. We are even allowed to look inside, where a service is going on. We see a lot of grief come out, men throw themselves against the tomb, women are crying, and there are people praying everywhere. While at the same time a little boy is walking around serving tea. This service is something we have never seen in our lives, still a little bit shaken we leave for our hotel. The next morning, we go back to the Shrine, but it doesn’t have the magic anymore it had in the dark.

For a while we look at the palace, the we walk a bit through the garden and finally we settle on a bench to watch the schoolchildren play. At first, we feel a bit like one of the sights of Shiraz, but after ten minutes the kids get used to us and things calm down

The Alisadr Caves are located about 75 kilometers north of Hamadan. After one in the USA and one in Indonesia, it is the largest cave in the world. And according to our guide, the one in America doesn’t have water in it, so that one doesn’t count.

Because there is water in the caves, the tour is by boat. These boats are pulled by watercycles. Of all the surprises we had in Iran, the idea of waterpedaling was probably the least expected.

impressive ali sard water cave tours is unforgetable. We expected there would be more, so we started looking for them, but it was the only one we discovered.

In the caves, there are of course a lot of stalactites and stalagmites. Erosion by the water, that sometimes had a higher level, has created some strange effects.

Halfway of the tour we could get out of the boat and do a bit of walking on one of the so-called islands. The cave reaches a height of 40 meters here and looks absolutely fabulous.

Then, we go back into the boats. We take a different route and see many other spectacular rock-formations.

The cave walls can extend up to 40 meters high, and it contains several large, deep lakes. The cave has a river flowing through it and most travel through the cave system is done with a boat. More than 11 kilometers of the cave’s water canals have been discovered so far. Some routes are 10 to 11 kilometers long and all lead to the ‘Island’.

Excavations and archeological studies of the cave have led to the discovery of ancient artworks, jugs and pitchers dating back to 12000 years ago. The animals, hunting scenes and bows and arrows depicted on the walls and passages of the exit section, suggest primitive man used the cave as their abode. The cave was known during the reign of Darius I (521-485 BC) which can be verified by an old inscription at the entrance of the tunnel. However, the knowledge of the existence of the 70 million-year old cave was lost, and only rediscovered in 1963 by Iranian mountaineers (or 1978 when a local shepherd followed the tunnel searching for water or a lost goat).

This cave is located at 48°18′E 35°18′N, in the southern part of Ali Sadr village. The cave digs into a hill called Sari Ghiyeh which also includes two other caves called Sarab and Soubashi, each 7 and 11 kilometers away from Ali Sadr Cave. Apparently the water in Ali Sadr cave is supplied by a spring in Sarab.

In the summer of 2001, a German/British expedition surveyed the cave to be 11 kilometers long[3]. The main chamber of the cave is 100 meters by 50 meters and 40 meters high.

A tour of the cave can be seen by pedal boats to a centrally located large atrium.

Dublin travel guide and tourist attractions guide through IRTouring some people hate it, others love it. For us, as for lots of others, Dublin was the beginning and the end of our 3 weeks holiday in Ireland; we arrived here with the ferry from Holyhead. Because we wanted to see so much of the rest of Ireland, we ended up with the almost impossible mission to explore this marvelous city in just one day.

The city is divided in two equal pieces by the river Liffey. The southern part is the medieval city. And the northern half has a special atmosphere, and a lot of shops.

There a so many buildings in Dublin with columns, you begin to wonder if it has been built by ancient Romans or Greeks. Of course, this isn’t true. The Dubliners just like columns, we think.

This building was once the House of Parliament, but since 1800 it houses the Bank of Ireland.

A lot of buildings in Dublin are quite nice, but the first floor is usually spoilt with enormous windows and advertisement. When you risk a sore neck and look above constantly, you’ll find out there are a lot of beautiful buildings here.

Just across the street from the Bank of Ireland is Trinity College, the old university buildings in the city. Here are more tourists than students for two reasons: 1: you just have to see the book of Kells and the Old Library, and 2: it’s the tourist season.

This is a combination that is not unusual in Ireland: an antique-shop where you can have some food. Or, is it a restaurant that wants to get rid of the old furniture .

Though there are not many splendid buildings in Dublin, there is one thing special: the colourful doors. Most doors are painted in bright colors and some have extra features: pillars, a circular window above the door, a big doorknob

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