Tehran and home again

Tehran and home again

The stay in Masoud and Selma's B&B was agreeable. Both our hosts are sports people. Their sport is rowing and Selma is the coach of the national girls' team, it is her full time job. They gave us the feeling of being a member of the family and twice we shared iftar (the first meal after sunset in ramazan) with them.

Tehran is a very big city consisting of parts separated by big highways. We lived very close to a Metro station and we used this system to travel around, quite convenient.

We visited the highlights, like national museum, the palaces of the last shah etc. and picknicked in parks. Our travel guide book stated that eating in public is prohibited during ramazan and that you can get in big trouble if the police spots you doing so. But we were absolutely not the only picknickers in the parks, so things may have changed the last couple of years. Still, travelling in this country during ramazan is a bit complicated, as you have to prepare carefully how and where to get (or carry) your lunch when going on a sightseeing tour. All in all restaurants and bars are not easy to find in this country, being it ramazan or not.

As our flight was in the small hours of the night we had a taxi to the airport at 22.00 hrs. We picked up our bikes from the baggage depot in good order, changed our Rials for a good rate, and imagine our surprise when, on entering the departure hall, we heard someone shouting our names. It was Bahram Jallipour, our Warmshowershost from Bander – Anzali on the Caspian coast, one month ago. He was travelling to his sister in Sweden with another flight the same night. He is a nice and funny man and we spent a couple of hours together, talking, repacking and laughing a lot. He is now riding his bike somewhere in Europe and he might direct it our way.....

Both our flights, in Tehran and Istanbul, departed with an hour delay, no problem. On arrival at Amsterdam airport one piece of baggage was not there though. Quite annoying, queing up for the desk for the report. The special taxi (bicycles) just had to wait another extra hour. But then.....

we arrived at our son's house just two hours after they had arrived themselves from the birth clinic: we could admire both our newly born granddaughter and her mother in good health. A very happy re-union with our next of kin and with this new little human being surprising us with her earlier than scheduled arrival in our world.

Our missing bag was delivered in good shape two days later, we had to work a couple of days to clear the jungle that used to be our garden and now we are trying to get used to the regular pensioners' lives. After an interesting, not always easy, but very satisfactory journey.