After all the quiet times in the mountains, Tehran came as a bit of a shock. It’s a big city with lots of option of how to spend your time. Do you go shopping in the bazaar? Do you look at the Royal Palace? Do you visit the Museum of Iran to see more of the ancient artefacts that have been dug out throughout the country? To be honest, we were out of energy. Instead of trying to cramp in as much as we could, we decided to try and see contemporary Iran and experience city life in the capital.

So we took it slow this morning, sleeping in, have a longer breakfast and using the internet after two days of abstinence. At about 11.30 we went out with the plan of having lunch in a tea house. The Lonely Planet recommends going to one of the parks to watch people which sounded like a good idea. Park-e Shahr is the one closest to our hotel so we could walk there. Right before we go to the entrance, we stumbled into a tiny market full of stalls. One stall sold freshly baked pastries, most of them vegetarian, another stall sold sweets. Two buy options and we were set for lunch on a park bench in Park-e Shahr. 🙂 A lady at the stall next door offered us to test the tea they are selling. They are the first company that has gained the organic label in Iran. She had a little cheat sheet which she used to read the information to us in English.

The park was quite big and to our surprise, it had bird cages in it as well. Once we had eaten and wandered around for a bit, we were ready for more exploration. Flo wanted to see the old embassy of the United States now named US Den of Espionage which was too far to walk there. Thus, we took the metro for a couple of stations to get there. Always a bit of an adventure to figure out how public transport works in other cities. The train was crowded but a lovely lady got me a seat before telling me about her three years in Vienna 30 years ago.

The US Den of Espionage is closed to the public most of the times but you can walk around it and look at the murals on the wall around the area. Such a weird experience. We continued from here to the Park-e Honar Mandan for some more people watching. The park sports a trim-dich-pfad as well as some sculptures. More strolling around before settling down for a café for some lovely tea, coffee and chocolate cake. Mmmmh, chocolate cake. 🙂

The café we chose was in the Iranian Artists’ forum building. We had snobbed the forum yesterday … but not today. The exhibition is for free and as a way of experiencing contemporary Iran, it was perfect. Taking our time, we made our way through three level of art. It was great. We especially liked the room dedicated to the caricaturist Hadi. The artist was actually present to take some pictures in the exhibition room so Flo and I ended up on a couple of “look here is the public looking at the works” shots, we think.

Public display of logo design suggestions for an event. Pretty cool.