Recent reviews Tehran
[koshkha, 20/06/2010] Back in 2002, the company I was working for arranged a seminar for local bakers and confectioners which was held in one of the large function rooms of the Azadi hotel. Several colleagues from Holland flew out for the meeting and I arrived half a day before them, flying in from Istanbul. I was picked up at the airport by our local agents who drove me to the hotel, got me checked in and then went on their way. By this time it was the small hours of the morning and I was a bit dazed by lack of sleep and rather alien surroundings. I was also a bit shocked whilst checking in to learn that I would h
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[os993, 22/05/2009] The Carpet Museum is fabulous, a must for anyone who has an interest in carpets and art. Two floors of carpets on display, absolutely amazing.
Large air conditioned building, very peaceful and quiet. Some excellent books are available for purchase, pricey, but worth buying.
The only problem is, after viewing these carpets, you will not like any others, including the ones on sale in Tehran Bazaar!
[koshkha, 04/05/2009] Iranians love carpets; I think it's in their blood. Stop any middle-class or wealthy Iranian in the street and he can tell you the going rate of a square meter of each popular type of carpet the way his counterpart in India or Dubai could tell you the price of an ounce of gold. And they invest in carpet the way other countries buy shares, gems or precious metals. In my own more modest and less wealthy way, I share their obsession if not their knowledge though I'm much more in the lower-priced flat-weave realm of rugs and kelims rather than the up-market knotted carpets. No matter where I go in
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[koshkha, 04/05/2009] The National Jewels Museum in Tehran is located in the basement of the Bank Melli, close to Ferdowski Square. It is without doubt both one of the most impressive and one of the most paranoid museums that I have ever visited and an absolute must-see if you visit Tehran.
If you want to see the National Jewels, it's a good idea to get there nice and early before the crowds build up. Hence, we were outside the bank half an hour before we could get in. As the time to open drew nearer, we moved closer to the bank's gates to make sure we got in when the vaults first opened. The paranoid security
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[koshkha, 04/05/2009] Most big cities have one or more iconic buildings that serve as an instantly recognisable symbol of that city. These are the buildings that the foreign correspondents stand in front of when making their reports on the television news. If it's Sydney they'll have the Opera House over their shoulders, if it's Moscow they'll be standing by the cathedral on Red Square and if it's Tehran, you can pretty much bet the Azadi Monument will be in the frame. It's big, it's white, it's a very distinctive funky shape like a giant piece of marble origami - what more could you ask for in a symbolic building?
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[koshkha, 08/05/2008] A Land of Faces
When you visit Iran there are faces looking down at you wherever you go on the streets and in the hotels and restaurants. In a land obsessed with martyrdom, every street corner and every roundabout seems to be decorated with the faces of the martyrs - mostly those who died during the Revolution or the Iran-Iraq war. But one or two faces stand out from the others and become instantly recognisable and the most prominent amongst these is undoubtedly the face of Ayatollah Khomeini. Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini was the man considered to have been the architect of the Iranian Revoluti
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[koshkha, 10/04/2008] In November 2006, we stayed at the Kowsar Hotel in Tehran at both the beginning and end of our two week tour of Iran. The hotel is classified as a 4-star and must once have been worthy of that accolade but today it's looking tired and shabby and desperately in need of a bit of love and attention. However, I rather doubt it'll get it in the short term. It's not in the area of town that attracts the high-spending business travellers and there's no great need to upgrade things for tourists like us. After all, as only around 3000 western tourists a year visit the country, and almost all of them ar
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[koshkha, 20/01/2007] When you visit Iran there's one thing you can't fail to spot - it is a country with a fixation on death and martyrdom; a country where no matter where you go, you are never very far from reminders of the Iran-Iraq war - or as the Iranians call it, 'the Imposed War'. The war ran for just short of eight years - from September 1980 to August 1988 and is recognised as the longest 'conventional' war of the 20th Century. Nearly twenty years after it ended, the memories are still very fresh in Iran.
I'll admit I was a little taken aback after an overnight flight to Tehran that the 'highlights' of
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