After lunch, we take a look at the other part of this beautiful and cozy resturant. This place has a hitory, and the pictures on the walls explaint it.

The owner, Mr. Olia, used to come to this resturanr as a customer and he loved this place so much that when he found out it's for sale, he bought it. He has made some changes to the building, but kept most of the area the same. 

Back stage

This place is famous for it's AabGoosht* (meat stew) which is made with sheep's meat, but the chef suggested "Aab Gooshte shotor-morgh" (made with Ostrich meat), everybody was hesitant to ordered it, but the chef said: "if you eat it once you will be hooked", so with that , my sister and I ordered it.
Just to let you know how it tasted, it was better than any aabgoosht I have ever had before, the meet was tender and delicious, if you didn't know what kind of meet it's you would never guessed it.
It was so good that when the chef came by to see how our food was I just shouted: "it is verrry delicious" :) later on we asked if we could see their kitchen, and the owner-chef, kindly let us go to the "back stage":

This device is called Tanoor, which the Dizzy are baked in it.

And here is the Chef, that prepares the delicious food.

Mr. Olia, Owner of Chehel Cheshmeh

Busy making tea for the customers.

* AabGoosht is a traditional meat stew, made with meat, garbanzo beans, potato, and tomato. There are other varieties which include other ingredients like white beans, yellow split peas, dried lemon and many more.

We woke up early in the morning to start our journey, so we won't get stuck in traffic. The road was not that bad but drivers were! but our driver aka my brother-in-law was one of those few good drivers.
We drove for couple of hours before getting to our destination. A small hidden gem in the middle of nowhere, if you don't know where this place is you will surly miss it.

A small garden with lots of trees, a small pond and few aggressive ducks :) and chickens and two roosters and a very unique and cozy inside diner. (The ducks and chickens have their own story....)

Anyway we decided to sit on a bench under a cherry tree. We got situated in our sits and ordered our food and as our food was arriving, it started to rain, so everybody grabbed something from the table and ran inside. We were disappointed that we couldn't have our lunch outside under the tree and enjoy the fresh air, but the food took our disappointed away; at least for me and my sister did....

Happy New Year everyone. Norooz Mobarak.

Now fast forward to current time... In less than 24hrs a New Year will start; Persian New Year or Nourooz, its beginning of Spring and start of a new beginning . There are lots of preparation before the new year, you can read all about it here:
http://www.where-is-iran.com/Ceremony-Iran/Nowruz-In-Iran.aspx

Few hours of sleep was enough, we saved our sleep for when come back, there was so much to do and we didn’t want to miss anything. The first day went by fast, we talked and talked, I got my foozooly (being nosy) out of the way by asking all the questions I can possibly squeeze in few hours and saved the rest for later.

I wish I had written everything down and made a travel diary, but I was too overwhelmed to think about it then, but for my next trips I will definitely do it.

Next I will talk about our wonderful day trip to Firooz Kooh.

The first thing (beside the beautiful new airport) that hit me when we were driving on the road, was how people drive, I mean it just very different,  after getting used to driving in U.S. , the shock factor after seeing the driving in Iran is huge, I mean you just can’t compare the two together. The roads are somewhat the same but following the path by drivers is not possible, even if a driver wants to obey the rules and drive between the lines, it’s just impossible.

The other thing was the many building and too many skyscrapers that were build and there are more in progress. 

The other thing was the timer on the traffic lights; it just keeps getting more interesting (in a strange way) as we are riding in the car. The timer for red light is 3 minutes, and for green is one minute. So what do you think a driver, stopping behind a red light for 3 long minutes, will do after the light turns green?  Well you guessed it, pressing on the gas pedal like there is no tomorrow!  And do you expect this driver to respect other drivers and share the road?

When we got to secondary roads, the traffic lights got interesting, most of them were blinking, and I thought like here, after 11:00 pm, all the lights in smaller roads become blinking lights, and I thought to myself that’s very interesting, but i guessed wrong, the lights like that all the time in the busy road, and don't underestand why is that!

After all these years I was so excited to find out everything and anything about everybody, you know just get updates from everybody’s life. I knew bits and pieces but being there and talking to them was so much better. We got to my sister’s house and dear Emaan made us some fresh tea, it was very good. We were so tired that we couldn’t sleep so we sat and chat for few hours, and then we had to get some sleep if we didn’t want to get sick on this historical trip!

Landing in Tehran

It was very exiting and overwhelming, I was worried and happy at the same time. I don't know but thinking about seeing my family after all this time made me very anxious. Finally we landed at Tehran's airport after 4 hours flight, @ 1:00 am on Tuesday July 12. We wanted to get out of the airplane as soon as posible, but that's not how they had planned for us! After 30 minutes we were finally at the stairs to get on the shuttle to go to the airport but then again, it is Iran and everyrthing is different there, there was only one shuttle and it got filled quickly and we had to wait for the next one! Anyway, we got to the airport after 30 more minutes, there was a long line to go through the gates! after another hour, we finally were cleared to enter Iran :) We took the escalator to go down stairs to claim our luggage, then behind the glass wall my wonderful family were standing. I got so exited that I forgot about our luggage and went toward the glass wall and after a brief inaudible communication, I went to get the luggage. It seemed that everything was moving in slow motion, I wanted to go and hug my family but i had to wait and wait and wait, why this line is not moving???? Finally we were greeted with hugs and kisses and more hugs. It was such a nice feeling, we were in Iran and with our family :)