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The real Dubai and desert overnight

The real Dubai After a simple of breakfast of items from the supermarket we took the hotel shuttle to Deira for the Gold Souk. The traffic was a shocker, just like yesterday evening. It was already hot when we wandered around, despite in largely sheltered alleys. The gold necklaces and adornments of various types were […]

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Sun, sand, sea, pool and waterpark

We ate a simple breakfast of cereal, mango juice and some cake in our room. Our hotel is in the same group as the Jumeirah Beach Hotel and we used their free shuttle to get there. The water in the sea by the hotel was just stunning. It was a gorgeous turquoise to look at […]

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Final night in Iran

Above:  Abbasi Hotel courtyard.  Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons. Shaking Minarets Kim didn’t sleep well due to the traffic noise. We changed room after breakfast to a quieter one. Kim also had a cold, so wasn’t particularly happy. We took a taxi to Chehel Sotoun, a pavilion with forty columns set within a park, but it […]

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Half the world

Around the Square Kim’s mum, Fiona, rang and woke us up. She had got the time wrong by an hour and rang too early as a result. We decided to look for alternative hotel. We didn’t have to go far, in fact, just across the road to Persia Hotel. We got a room with a […]

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Flying to Esfahan

We had breakfast with Daniel and took it easy this morning. We’re flying from Shiraz to Esfahan in the evening and are just absorbing the experience of being in Kerman, having done the must-sees of the area. About 1100 we went for a walk to find the Church of St Simon the Zealot but we […]

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Persepolis

The hotel buffet breakfast was similar to those we’ve had so far on this trip, plus crispy dried cake-bread and biscuits. Last night, we had organised with the hotel receptionist Hussein for a driver to take us to Persepolis. He said he knew a good driver which he had known for 34 years that had […]

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Long bus ride

Ali from the hotel had arranged our bus ticket from Kerman to Shiraz, so it was a stress-less breakfast followed by a short taxi ride to the bus station for our long bus-ride to Shiraz. At the station we ran into the man whom we met at the bazaar, who wanted to know about migration […]

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Back to Kerman

Above: Bam’s town centre. It was our sleep-in today, waking up at 0830 before taking a cold shower and having breakfast. Akbar, the owner of the guesthouse introduced himself after returning from Kerman. He was a teacher in English and Persian literature. We wandered around Bam’s town but there wasn’t much to captivate us.   […]

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Mud-brick citadel of Bam

We reached Akbar Guest House in Bam around 1300. It was like a little oasis within their compound. We bought some snacks in place of lunch. It was a social place at the guesthouse. We chatted to Daniel, a Swedish ex-military guy who raves about Sydney and Australia, having been there for the Olympics in […]

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Mahan

It was a more civilized wake-up at 0700 for breakfast of greasy fried egg, bread sticks, jam and coffee. Our organised transport turned out to be the driver which booted us out of the taxi at the airport yesterday for whatever reason due to communication difficulties. His job for the day was to take us […]

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