by | Jul 14, 2020 | Iran, Planning
February 9, 2015
As usual I’m nervous and I don’t want to go anymore.
It often happens, a few days before departure: I realize how comfortable I am at home, with my routine and my cats, and now that winter is almost over and days are warmer and sunnier, there are a lot of places around here that I could visit and many events to take part to, etc.
But as soon as I will be on the plane and it will be too late to change my mind and the liberating headache will take over, I’ll be shot into the “discovery” version of myself and I will look forward to the long walks and pictures and writing.
What scares me a bit at the moment is:
- The picture for the visa that I will get at the airport, is it ok if my hair is visible or should I cover it with a scarf? Meridiani says that I need the scarf, the consulate doesn’t. To be safe I should take another picture with a scarf; I’ll do it if I have time.
- The hotel in Tehran hasn’t been confirmed yet. Usually I wouldn’t mind too much, but I need the hotel voucher to get the visa.
- Will I be dressed adequately? I have long chemisiers, a scarf to cover my head and I like it, but will it be good enough?
- Is the rough plan good or have I planned too many stops? Only in Isfahan and Shiraz we are staying 2 or 3 nights, in other destinations we’ll arrive at about midday, we’ll go to the hotel to drop the bags, go visiting and the next morning we’ll leave. We’ll be back to Italy super tired… but happy! (I hope). Maybe we should skip one place or two and spend more time in the others. I don’t like to rush. But this time we don’t have much time…
- Will I have enough time to pack my bags tomorrow or should I start now?
- On my boarding pass there’s a nice “M” for male near my name: did I do something wrong while booking or was it the website fault? I was very careful during the booking, m/f and date of birth, but it is true that I was doing many bookings at the same time on various sites and I might have missed something. Will it be a problem at boarding?
- What am I forgetting? Because it’s not “if”. Something I’m going to forget for sure. When we went to the Dominican Republic I forgot my notebook battery. Will they let me take the notebook with me this time or will they assume I’m a journalist hence send me back home with the notebook?
In three days I’ll be in Tehran. In the worst case scenario, if anything went wrong, if they send us back, we can still stop in Istanbul, which wouldn’t be a bad place neither…
Updates: a few minutes after I published this, my friend Paola, that works for an airline, told me that the pictue is ok without scarf and for my new gender there is no problem, they’ll board me nonetheless. Good!!
by | Jul 14, 2020 | Iran, Planning
January 23, 2015
Iran. I want to go before it becomes too popular. Tourism has already increased a lot in the last years, since the political situation is quiet. On the Italian Foreign Minister website there are no dots for special advices for Iran, no danger warnings; it’s been a while since I visited a country with no dangers. There’s a dot for the UK and France, one for Belgium and Turkey, one for Haiti “travels are not recommended unless determined by real necessity”. So this time we are really good, we’re going to a place where “security situation is good”.
We are going for 14 days only. Normally I wouldn’t visit a new country for less than a month, but this time it’s ok because:
- the return flight is only 280 euro (Iran is actuallly not too far from Europe, just South of Turkey)
- getting the visa requires some time (and as usual we don’t have time, we decided to go yesterday and we have to be back before the end of February because in March Luca has many garden works to do) but if you go for less than 14 days you can get a visa at the airport (this is for Italy, I know that it’s completely different for US or Israel citizens)
- 4 weeks would be nice in Cuba or Messico, but we went to a Latin country last year (Dominican Republic), I want to change environment and culture
- Iran is not too expensive nor cheap like Asia; I guess it will be around 50 euro per day, traveling on a budget; the problem is that you can’t get cash from ATMs (there are ATMs, but they only accept national cards), so you should bring all the money you need in cash. For 30 days it makes 1.500 euro, 3.000 for two people. I’d rather not travel with all that money in my pockets.
- so I have the excuse to go back to Iran on a train from Istanbul and see the North of the country, in another trip 🙂
- Luca has to work and it wasn’t easy to convince him to go, two weeks is better than nothing
I’m excited at the idea. Two weeks are not a long time, but it will be a nice culture shock and I’ve been wanting to go to Persia for a long time, cradle of humanity. It might be chilly, because despite the fact that it’s closer to the equator, it’s a bit mountainous; the capital Tehran for example is at more than 1.000 meter of altitude, and in most parts of the country temperature is like in Italy.
It took me a few hours to buy the ticket because I had to check 1. the cheapest company (that is Pegasus) 2. the website with the best offer (directly on Pegasus? On lastminute? Expedia?). At the end I bought it on Edreams because I could pay with paypal; lastminute was 40 euro cheaper, but I didn’t have enough money on my card and didn’t want to postpone.
So here we go, excited!
