Not having to camp meant that we slept in a little. Fereshteh made us an early breakfast as other members of the family were still sleeping. Afterwards, when everyone was up, we took a round of photos as we hadn’t taken enough yesterday. Packing up was comparatively quick and we were good to go on the “short” ride to Hamadan, about 180km away.

Bisotun, the ancient inscription site, lay on our way. Again, we had to pay the standard price of 400.000 rials as tourists (about NZ$20) to gain entrance. The site is big though.  We started with a short hike up to a rock which has carvings of human figures on three sites. One is identified as a king while the others are not as clearly marked.

Further into the park, you pass a Hercules statue. Hercules, you might ask? Yes. Well, the Greek left it as a “hah, we conquered you” gift. Originally, there was a lion statue depicted there; the Greek then added the Hercules on the back of it, making a rug out of the lion. Charming fellows all around.

There used to be a Parthian relief of Mithrades II next but it has been defaced with a giant inscription plate in Arabic. I didn’t even take a picture of it.

Next up was the main attraction: Darius as a bas-relief with inscription panels in Elamite, Akkadian and Old Persian around the scene. This was an utter disappointment. Almost nothing of it was visible as a scaffold told of renovation efforts. You could only take a picture from far, far away or have only the scaffold on it. I even hiked up to the beginning of the closed off zone to see if there was any way of getting a look but nope. Especially Flo was disappointed. He didn’t feel too well to begin with as I might have given him my sniffles.

The site stretches out quite a bit after Darius but we were hot and tired already. So we walked to Farhad Tarash to have a look and then turned around. Farhad Tarash is a huge, cleared area on the rock face some 200 meters long which was dedicated for an inscription which has never been done. So now, it’s just a huge, smooth, vertical surface at the bottom of the cliff. So odd. From here, we also had a view to an old caravanserai but didn’t go anymore.

Time to head back to the bike and get on the road. Our excursion had lasted longer than we expected. Hunger caught up with us before we reached Hamadan and we stopped at a roadside eatery which advertised a burger on its door. When we went in, two guys just bought ice cream. There was a little kafuffle when they left and one of them pointed at us while refusing to take his change. So the next thing that happened was ice cream, appearing in front of us. Those guys had just shouted us ice cream! How nice is that? We still needed real food though and went with falafel sandwiches. When we wanted to pay, the owner didn’t take it. Instead, he showed us a word in Farsi on an app similar to google translate: Guest. What were we supposed to do? We thanked him for his kindness and felt really good about the world and its people. 🙂 Not much else you can do after that.

Now Hamadan was only a hop away. The Lonely Planet listed some cheap options and we found the perfect place in the Ordibesht Hotel. A spacious room (3 beds), clean toilet facilities and even a small kitchen with a samovar providing hot water. If we could have exactly this place in every city, we’d be so happy.

Flo felt off so he got to have a two hour nap while I updated the blog and commented the photos for it. At 5.30pm, we left in search for dinner. Right next to the hotel, I stumbled upon a cake and sweets shop. Everything in here looked delicious. The owner didn’t speak any English but speaking with hands and feet we got the information that he would close at 8pm tonight. Enough time to go for food, come back to choose a dessert and go back to the hotel.

Searching for dinner was a tedious thing. Both restaurants we wanted to go to were closed (Friday). So we wandered back towards our hotel, looking for food and ended up in a fast food joint at Imam Khomeini Square. The fast food was Irani for once so I got to try the large “samosas” (that’s how they look like to me) filled with potato and herbs while Flo had a bun filled with salmon or some kind of sausage and a very meaty looking pizza pie. My food was really yummy so this is something I would go for again.

Hamadan in general was nice to us. The sun was shining and while wandering around looking for food, many people smiled at us, greeted us and welcomed us in their city/Iran. Some even stopped for a conversation. One young lady must have followed us for a bit (I think) as she had three questions which sounded like she spent some time thinking on how to phrase them. She was lovely, as were all the others. Hamadan doesn’t see that many tourists so the feeling of being famous or a rockstar returned.

One last thing needed to be done…buy dessert! Going for the smallest available box, I was slightly overwhelmed with the choices. I got cream-filled puffs, chocolate cupcakes, slices of a creamy looking cake, cookie sandwiches and dry cookies where I had no idea what they were. My box was full to the brim in the end. And the owner wanted to give it to us for free. Trying really hard to pay this time while buying “luxury” for us, the owner only accepted half the money it would have cost us. Leaving the shop with a box full of sweets that I bought for NZ$2.20. That’s maybe a euro fifty for you European folk.

Everything in it was yummy though one thing needs to be singled out as heavenly. Flo had spotted the cookie sandwiches and I am very grateful for that. Between two crumbly cookies was a gooey marshmallowy cream which had softened the cookies a little bit. It had something of an overly large macaroon but with marshmallow in the middle. Divine!