Day 20 - Shiraz

Our guide Yasna arrived at 9 am as arranged earlier by phone and she turned out to be the very same guide that had escorted the Canadian Iranians from Shiraz to Zeinoddin a couple of days earlier. She also works for Iran Traveling Centre, our Shiraz based travel agency. Her first role as guide was to assist us in returning our rental car to the Shiraz Europcar office which turned out to be a gold dealership in the main. Somehow in the past 48 hours we had managed to acquire a scrape on the front passenger door so our deposit will be reduced somewhat to take this into account. Having dealt with the necessities of transport we then headed off to our first stop, the Naranjestan Ghavan museum. From there we walked to the Arg-e Karim Khan citadel a huge castle like structure in the center of Shiraz. Again on foot we ventured to the Aramgah-e Shah-e Cheragh mosque situated in a square not unlike Imam Square in Esfahan although much smaller. Entering the mosque itself required removing one's shoes and at first I was a little reluctant as I thought it wouldn't be worth the effort. How wrong I was proved to be when I did remove my shoes and entered the most glittering interior of a shrine that I had seen. This was the burial place of Karim Khan a former ruler and his tomb attracted hundreds of devotees wishing to touch the tomb itself and to pray in it's vicinity. We also visited another small museum known as the Bargh-e Nazar and Pars museum. Somewhere in the midst of all this we had lunch at a well known Shirazi restaurant (it's in the Lonely Planet guide as being a top restaurant) the Sharzeh traditional restaurant. The food was excellent and our meal was accompanied by the sounds of live traditional music being played by a band in the atrium of the lower level of the restaurant. After lunch we wandered through some of the bazaar and ended up buying a Persian carpet and arranging for it to be air freighted to Australia - something I'd been hoping to avoid but in the end it seemed inevitable.  At the end of the day, after parting company with Yasna who has proved to be delightful company, we ventured out again in the evening for a dose of Iranian fast food for dinner. On the directions of our hotel staff we located 101 Fast Food restaurant and with the aid of a couple of local lads we managed to order a tasty meal for an insignificant sum again. Having satisfied our hunger we then ventured further afield locating a garden with an old mansion operating as a tea-house that Yasna had told us about. Of course we stopped for tea and enjoyed the surrounds before heading back to our hotel and bed.