Tabriz, first stop in Iran

Blue mosque, bazaar

Quick Tips:

Best Way To Get Around:

walking, taxis

Rooms are small and clean. Price is reasonable. Only 15.000 IRR, which is less than 2 USD. The manager is quite a big man who speaks good english. They serve great breakfast. Bread with honey and a piece of butter (and you can drink heaps of Zam Zam Cola there!)

Abghust is special and famous Iranian food. It is made of beans and cow meat. Eating this speciality is a ritual by itself. At first they will serve you food which seems like soup with quite too much beans and other vegetables. After eating three quarters of the soup by normal spoon, you have to use something like a small hammer to push the rest. When you are finished after about 10 minutes of pushing the soup, you can eat it with the bread. After one portion you will so full, that eating anything else will give you serious problems. And it's delicious! (You can get it for about 2 USD)

In fact, the bazaar in Tabriz is one large quarter of the city with the roof above the streets. When one walks through this spectacular city within the city and feels the atmosphere of the place time stops. It's very easy to get lost in the streets of the bazaar. It's divided into a few sections. In one you can buy practical goods like pans and pots, while in the other it is possible to admire beautiful handmade carpets. There's one special street I liked very much. It was the street with gold and silver. It is dark, but full of people and red lights all around the vitrins. Sometimes I was very curious why Iranians love silver much more than gold, but after that I recognized that silver shines on their brown skin much more nicely than gold.

When I arrived in Tabriz from Turkey I was searching for new trousers, because those I wore were quite destroyed after hitchhiking in Turkey. When I was searching for new trousers I found that Iranian soldiers were wearing quite good uniforms (especially those soldiers who were higher on the hierarchy of command). After some small research I found that it is possible to buy something like that in many small shops along Ferdowsi street. So I bought some. Do you believe that those trousers with pockets on the side of legs, which europeans and americans buy for about 50 to 100 USD, cost only 2 USD in Iran? Great! And if you need some alterations (like dry zip on the pockets) the tailor will make it in the place in 5 minutes for you!