Today, Kat’s dad, Al aka Oghaye Khavari took us to see two of the Shah’s Palaces. (The extravagant and mostly hated Shah that was over thrown 30 years ago.) We took a Taxi to the palaces and the traffic was ridiculous. People drive pretty crazy here, weaving and merging with no fear. Coming within an inch of hitting each other is common practice. The smog is horrendous! Close to 17 million people in one city, I guess smog is inevitable. But this is bad, hardly bearable at times. I often have to cover my mouth and nose just to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning! Once we finally got to the palaces we bought tickets. The cash money is in “Rials” but prices are sometimes displayed as “Tomans” which has one fewer 0 than Rials. So we thought the tickets for 6 of us to see 3 exhibits was $100 but we were gladly mistaken when we found out it was only $10. The palaces are a popular school field trip so we saw several school classes, mostly young girls. Each school has a different color uniform, we ran into a group of 30 4th graders all wearing green uniforms and their hair covered of course. They were amazed to see us and quickly ran up to my Mom and Denise and said “Hello, how are you”. My mom who is great at interacting with kids and loves it, quickly replies “Salam! Engelisee Baladeed?” (Hello! Do you speak English?) I watched proudly as the kids smiled back shyly. My mom has been studying Farsi tapes with me over the past couple months so she was excited to put it to good use. I love how she embraces cultures and the things in my life so openly. Along with the rest of my family as well. I really appreciate my parents, aunt and brother for being so supportive and open for coming on this trip with us. I’m so lucky to have such a great family and friends ☺ (that includes all my family and friends back at home too, I love and miss you all!)
The Shah’s palaces were extravagant to say the least. Keep in mind that these were only 2 of his 20 around the country. Huge rooms, tons of gold, real tiger carpets on the floor, rooms lined with thousands of mirrors that took years to make. I can now see why he was hated so much. It was interesting though, they gave details about who was the last people to visit the rooms such as President Carter, Charles De Gaulle and Kings from Jordan and Egypt.
After the Palaces we took a cab further north towards the mountains of Tehran to an area called “Darband”. Tehran is already at 4500ft. elevation and is lined with huge mountain ranges in the north capped with snow. We met Kat and her mom in Darband (they went to get fitted for her wedding dress), and had lunch at a very nice Kabob restaurant nestled in the rocky cliffs. Darband is beautiful, very peaceful and serene. Many couples go there to get away from the city. We saw several couples holding hands and cuddling on the café beds lined with Persian carpets and pillows nestled off the walking trail further up in the mountains. (we even saw a couple of Gay guys. Not openly of course, but being from the Bay our gaydar is on point so we knew!). After lunch we all walked up the mountain trials a bit lined with small vendors selling jams and sour fruit roll-up looking things. We found a nice hookah café right next to the small river running down the mountain. We all comfortably packed into the raised bed and ordered a hookah and some “Chai” (Tea). Very relaxing!
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