Day 251 | Sunday November 20
At my next stop in Kashan I was supposed to stay at a friend of someone I met in Tehran. Last night I received a message that they had to get out of town. I had a look at the replies on my Instagram post and there were many people who offered me a place to stay in Kashan so I contacted one of them and 10 minutes later it was confirmed. I love the power of social media. He said he would wait for me at the toll gate at his city. I started driving and suddenly there was a split with 2 options: Kashan or Kashan. I decided to go to Kashan but I would find out this was not the highway but a smaller road. Probably it was the more scenic and interesting route . I arrived in the city without passing the pay toll so I sent him my location via Telegram and a few minutes later he, Saeed, and his sister and cousin picked me up. They all spoke very well English. I followed them to their were the rest of the family was waiting. We had lunch on the floor and they laughed a lot about my tryings to sit in crossed-legged just like them, my muscles are not so flexible anymore. Everything happens on the ground here and they laughed a lot when I asked them why they have a dinning table here as I thought it was just for decoration.
We explored the city and they brought me to Fin Garden. A historical Persian garden with a story. It contains Kashan’s Fin Bath, where Amir Kabir, the Qajarid chancellor, was murdered by an assassin sent by King Nasereddin Shah in 1852. Completed in 1590, the Fin Garden is the oldest extant garden in Iran.
Next stop The Tabātabāei House, a historic house. It was built in the early 1880s for the affluent Tabatabaei family. It consists of four courtyards, wall paintings with elegant stained glass windows, and includes other classic features of traditional Persian residential architecture, such as biruni and andaruni. The house is almost 5,000 square meters and has been very well renovated. The interior yards have beautiful gardens.
The house had belonged to a trader man in carpet field. the most important trade of Kashan is rugs and carpets and many of rich men are in carpets and textiles fields in this city.
For dinner they decided to change from the floor to the dinning table, a more convenient way to conserve the meal. Iranian food is similar to Turkish food. A lot of meat, kebab, chicken and bread. The breads are different tough, it are long flat beds.
Day 252 | Monday November 21
We visited the old bazar in Kashan, a 2 kilometers long indoor street with many small shops. You can buy everything here: from cow eyes to fans and brooms to carpets. Kashan is one of the 4 carpet capitals in Iran. They still make it all by hand here. The bazaar has a famous architecture, especially at its Timche-ye Amin od-Dowleh section, where a grand light well was built in the 19th century. The bazaar is still in use and is a few miles in total length. In the bazaar’s complex beside the main bazaars, there are several mosques, tombs, caravanserais, arcades, baths, and water reservoirs that each were constructed in a different period.
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