We had the names and gps coordinates of two potential parking/camping places in Esfahan. Parking-esfahan.com (a truck repair shop and parking area) on the Northern side of the city and Isfahan Tourist Inn on the southern side. So this morning we set off early to make our way to Esfahan-parking. As expected the traffic was dense and a little crazy but the road system of Esfahan was up to the task with good freeways all the way. We got to the correct GPS coordinates and could not see esfahan-parking anywhere. A quick call to the phone number we got from their website and we were told - sorry, we sold the workshop some time ago. Bummer. That meant a drive back through and around the city to our second option.

The Tourist Inn turned out to be a real gem of a camping place. Our earlier mistake actually worked in our favour with the Tourist Inn. Because of that mistake we approached the Inn from the North which put us on the same side of a divided road as the place. Had we come at it from the South as we would have without the earlier mistake it would have been very difficult to see and impossible to turn into their entrance way.

Anyway, the place seems prepared for motorhomes. It has electricity, a toilet and shower block just for us campers and the showers are hot.


Once having completed checkin formailities and parked ourselves I set about draining the oil from the newly repaired hub. Every one in Shiraz told me I had to do this and in truth I wanted to see how much metal had accumulated on the magnetic drain plug. A large accumulation would indicate a likely problem with the most recent repair. The outcome was a modest amount of metal debris on the magnetic plug. So we are probably OK, but I will check again in a few days.

After those chores we set off into the center of the city where the main historic and religious attractions are. We spent most of the afternoon walking around Imam Square (second largest in the world after Tiananmen). Bordering the square we visited the Ali Qapu Palace and the Imam Mosque. The Qapu palace was built in the 16th century. It is unusual because of its height, 6 floors. Its elevated terrace with a roof supported by slender timber poles and its top floor music room with very unusual wall decorations (that are designed to improve the accoustics) were fascinating. The Imam Mosque joins the southern end of the square at an oblique angle so that the inside of the mosque faces Meccca. It is a huge structure and seeme like it might be very impressive. But today when we visited, a team of workmen were erecting scaffolding and tarpaulin covers for the main body of the mosque. From the number of uninstalled gas heaters we saw standing about we guessed the mosque was being prepared for winter operation.

We also did some serious souvenir shopping today.

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