A Family Dinner

Location: Buali Hotel, Hamedan, Iran
Date: 25th April, 2008

We drove about 180km to Kermanshah today, to see a couple of sights. Firstly we stopped at Bisotoum to see the ancient carving of Hercules that Darius the Great ordered carved - he’s a smaller bloke than I thought. We also saw (from a distance) a bas-relif of Darius and the 9 slaves.

Then onwards to Taghebestan and a very pleasant site of two more carvings and then a lunch where we were serenaded by a kamanchech player!

That evening (and being Friday evening everyone was out and about and the traffic was terrible), we stopped at a charming little family restaurant (in fact, the family were all eating there) where we got into an interesting discussion of life in the USA and politics with a man, Mr A, who works for the Iranian Government. He had some interesting views (that’s all I’ll say here), and he invited us back to his house to meet all his family. He was intelligent, progressive and reasonable despite being a dead-ringer for President Ahmadinejad! It seems that Iran is full of people like this, which can only be a good thing.

Are you listening Fox “News”? Iranians are nice folks!