Tales from the Dark Side: Day 9

I again awoke early today and showered, then packed up my things. The bellhop arrived early to take the luggage, but only by a few minutes. I finished getting ready and took some last minute photos before leaving.

The direction of Mecca and the American Standard sink.

Me and my new scarf.

I went down to breakfast and took some more photos of the hotel along the way.

Then I discovered that I had accidentally deleted my What's App account from my phone, and the only way to get it back was to turn on roaming for the authentication text message. I combed the FAQ, then sent a message to the tech support. I also emailed my family to tell them that I might not be able to use What's App for the rest of the trip. Then I began my breakfast.

I decided to turn on roaming, which fixed my What's App problem, but it also reset my phone and my Fitbit to local time. I turned off roaming and reset my phone to CDT, but my Fitbit would not reset. I had a whole process too to calculate actual steps, and I liked getting in most of my steps before 9am. Oh well.

At 9, I was at the lobby, but I had racked up so many room charges from laundry and eating at the coffee shop that we didn't have enough Rial. After some time, the issue was fixed, and we were back on the bus again to leave this paradise.

This is an old caravan stop.

We stopped at a truck stop and I asked the driver, in Farsi, "where are we?" and showed him the map. He took my pen and underlined the town Natanz. One of the members of my group bought some candy. She said to take more than one, so I did, and I put most of them in my bag to share with friends.

We were then on the road again, and soon enough, we were entering Kashan.

First things first, we had lunch. Lunch here was good, but the most exciting thing was that all of the stalls in the bathroom - every single last one - had a sit-down toilet! Oh, what a joy it was to go into any stall and not have to worry about keeping my pants clean!

Anyway, then we had lunch, and there were 5 different kinds of rice! It was all very delicious.

We were then off to the Fin Garden with a palace and a bathhouse.

Some Iranian graffiti on the left.

Replicas of looms this time.

The fourth corner had no paintings left.

They didn't use a lot of coins in Iran, so people throw in whatever currency they have, I guess.

Next was the tour of the old bathhouse, now museum. I really liked the tile patterns.

We drove through the city, which was full of construction of beautiful homes.

Then we went to a historic house, and saw some rosewater vendors along the way to and from.

More infernally steep stairs.

Gorgeous house.

There's that Asian Squat.

The loneliest koi.

Click the image for a video from inside the house.

The special place for the elderly to sit on the right.

The bathroom.

The servants' area, with the kitchen on the left.

We walked back through the rosewater shops. I went back more quickly so that they didn't put rosewater on me like they did when we approached. I didn't want more scents on me.

Rosewater manufacturer on the left and the drinkable rosewater and a cookie on the right.

Finally, it was time to check into the hotel. The group was then going to a Bazaar, then to have dinner, but I opted to stay in. I claimed the big bed for myself after asking my roommate her preference, then prepared my outfit for tomorrow's excursion to Qom. The outlets did not seem to work either, so I turned the wireless off and battery save mode on. Later, it was so hot in the room that I took a cool shower.

It was dark, so I opened the window, hoping that it would be cooler outside. It wasn't, but there was music in the air, so I took a video.

My roommate returned later and told me that one of the guides would come by to check our outlets. It turned out that they did work - they were not just outlet covers glued to the wall - but they had child-safety locks on them. We had been trying to use brute force to get things to plug in, and what we had to do was wiggle them a little and it worked.

The Persian Standard tub and Quran & kit.

After that, I settled in to sleep. Our bags had to be out by 8:30 and we were leaving at 9.