A Day In The Lalz: Iran | Tehran

I apologize for the lack of posts last week! I just got back from a two week trip to Iran and Dubai and the jet lag has been a bit much to get over! I've finally gotten around to uploading all 1700 pictures from my trip and sorting though things in order to share all my adventures and blog about it.

My sister, mom, and I traveled to Iran for my cousin's wedding and in addition we did some traveling while we were there. We managed to explore Tehran, travel to Kashan, and Masuleh. In addition on the way back we stopped by Dubai for two nights.

In the next few weeks I will be blogging all about the fun things I did, saw, ate and much more! This week I'm sharing all my adventures in Tehran!

The first stop of the day was Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. There is a back story to why I wanted to visit this museum - a few weeks ago I saw an Instagram post of a few Andy Warhol photos hung at the museum. The museum has a huge collection of famous paintings from Warhol, Van Gogh, Monet, Jackson Pollock etc (read about it here). I convinced my sister that we had to go see these paintings because I'm a huge art nut. We got to the museum - which is completely out of the way - walk through the entire space and there is no Warhol paintings. My sister nearly lost it and I was contemplating if I brought us to the wrong museum. A few screams later we find the museum administration offices and pop our head into the Public Relation coordinator's office. I give him my whole spiel and he enthusiastically replies "yes of course we have Warhol along with thousand of work famous paintings at this museum!" So I naturally ask where they are because I want to see them and his response - "In the museum vault with no access to the public." My jaw dropped because I knew I wasn't crazy when I saw the Instagram picture of the paintings hung. He confirmed that I wasn't crazy and the museum had temporarily brought out a few of the paintings however it was only for a week and occasionally the museum will display the paintings every 3-4 years. He proceeded to tell me there is a book I could purchase in the gift shop with all the forbidden photos in the vault - which I obviously purchased - and now makes for a great coffee table book in my apartment. Moral of the story - Instagram lies.

After our much disappointing morning we headed for lunch. We had the most delicious aash at Nikou Sefat Aash in Meydan Enghelab. Since we couldn't decide on which aash to have we ordered one of each: Aash Reshteh, Aash Dough, and Aash Shole Ghalamkar. This place was super jam packed and insanely busy - for good reason - because the aash was delicious!!!

In the evening we went to Tabiat Bridge - it recently opened in late 2014 and was high on my list of places to visit while in Tehran. I read about the bridge in a news article online (here) and it instantly reminded me of The High Line in NYC. Even though it was a Wednesday night when we went the bridge was packed with families, kids, and pretty much everyone. There are a ton of coffee shops, restaurants, and lovely views to take in! I definitely recommend a visit to the bridge and just walking around and enjoying the scenery. It also makes for some great people watching :)