First tastes of Iran: Mashhad, Qom, Kashan, Yazd

So. Finally we are in Iran, and there would be so much to write that I guess only a few glimpses are possible.

Iranians are very friendly, and seem always attracted by the possibility of practicing their English, so basically we meet people all the time. There are so many similarities between Iranians and Italians it is difficult even to start......
We have also ended up reversing the direction of the itinerary (we are now going north to south), which contributes to the trip being even more eventful.

Two days ago we arrived in Mashhad, the city of the Imam Reza shrine. We were overwhelmed at first by the amount of pilgrims in what is one of the holiest cities of Islam, masses of pilgrims and all women in chador (also Giulia has to borrow one). It is impressive and probably difficult for us to fully understand phenomenon like this, were there is explicit grief for someone dead more than 1000 years ago.
Note that if you are a foreigner you can contact the upfront and they guide you around for free, and even give you books for free, a very nice experience we truly recommend. Unfortunately, the current edition of Lonely Planet makes no mention of this.

But we were also taken away by the complexity of the matter of the veiled women.
The veil does not seem to prevent women to share feminine chitchat and jokes, as our fully veiled guide was doing with Giulia.
The veil also does not prevent at all some even flashy display of femininity, as we could see that same night at the Mashhad airport, with women wearing a skimpy veil, high heels, pink tops, heavy makeup, and thick eyeliners.

We also needed to leave Mashhad somehow, and due to the number of pilgrims our options were limited. We ended up in a nice travel agency, where we quickly became the local attraction (somehow they wanted us to go to Damascus), and found out it was impossible to fly to the south of the country as we originally planned.... so we decided on the fly to invert everything, fly to Teheran and proceed southwards....

We have no time to tell about the ride to the airport with the funniest Afghan taxi driver, who complained about Iran not giving him a driver licence at the same time as bumping into the car behind him (that was something hilarious).... and even less time about the young enterpreneur we met at the airport who very openly started to talk trash of all the current limitations of social life in Iran, and promised to invite us to some great house party in Teheran....

In the end, we took this night fly with Fars Air to Teheran, and from there a taxi to Qom (20 euros), another holy city with a pecular atmosphere, full of religious students from everywhere, from Iran to Pakistan

From there, we took another ride to Kashan (about 15 euros), a wonderful city of garden, teahouses, and traditional houses. We also went to Abyaneh, mysteriously mentioned by the Lonely Planet as a wonder of the world, but in reality just ok.
We noticed in Kashan that the time of green tea is over, and only black tea is now served. Maybe this is the only true border between Central Asia and Middle East...

We came then today to Yazd, again by taxi (35 euros), a beautiful old town we are starting to enjoy...