Our blog needed some love and attention; it’s not that we are tired of writing but a combination of bad internet connections, long and full days and thus not enough time to write the appropriately long entries had led to the biggest backlog we had so far. Thus, the whole morning was spent on posting blog entries to catch up. Even if we have pre-written the entries, uploading photos and then commenting every single one takes time.

We left the hostel for lunch, mostly because Flo was hangry. As always, vegetarian choices were severely limited so I was stuck with soup, salad and dessert. The dessert Khoresht mast was a new thing I tried and it did not convince me. Looking it up on the net also revealed that while it is a dessert, it is not vegetarian…

Two mosques, one enormous gate bazaar entrance. This square has it all.

Afterwards, we strolled down one of the bigger streets until we found Naqsh-e Jahan Imam Square which is the center of Esfahan, really. The name means “pattern of the world”. The square is a rectangle and it is enclosed by the low buildings that house part of the bazaar with the main entrance of the bazaar to one (short) side and the entrance to the Masjed-e Shah (Royal Mosque) on the exact opposite. A second mosque, Masjed-e Sheikh Lotfollah, has its entrance at the middle of one of the long sides. From its dimensions, the square is impressive but unfortunately, there is a construction site right on the square and the dome of Masjed-e Shah is also clad in a scaffold; this takes away from the impression quite a bit.

Super fish eye angle!

We visited Masjed-e Shah nevertheless. It is impressive, especially the domed chamber of the main sanctuary which is constructed in a way that the echo reaches all of the people gathered. The spot is marked by four stones on the ground, rather unremarkable, but one of the tour guides sang a bit on there and it was loud and clear for everyone to hear.

Already tired, we then turned to the bazaar. The Lonely Planet recommends a very authentic tea house in one of the corners where men go to smoke shisha and drink tea. Finding it in the chaos of the bazaar was not easy. The passageway towards the tea house was cluttered with old electronics while the tea house itself was just cluttered. Period. Cluttered in the most amazing way possible, though; all sorts of things are hanging from the walls or share wall space. We thoroughly enjoyed our tea there without any shishas, sitting in the smoke cloud in the men’s section, watching people.

Tea, sugar cubes and something sweet…great combo!

The break time was refreshing so that after that, we could explore some more of the bazaar. Roughly following the suggested walking tour, we walked down some passages, explored a vaulted building to the left, stumbled into an old caravansary on the right which is now a construction side and gave up about halfway through as our feet were killing us.