We arrived about 10.30 am in Tehran on Friday. We decided to take a flight from Abadan as there were no train tickets available. I was a little nervous as i had read before that the airplanes used in Iran for domestic flights were old planes from Russia, which were not able to be maintained properly. About 2 years ago though, due to safety issues, these planes were made redundant and the planes used now, albeit still about 20 years old, are ex-American planes. The flight was very smooth :).

We are staying with another of Ebi's uncles and family. Ebi, his sister Sara and brother Davood were all actually born in this house and the three of them with their mum and dad, lived in the rooms upstairs, one of which we are sleeping in while we are here. The family moved to Abadan when Ebi was 9. Being back here has brought a lot of nice childhood memories back for Ebi :-)

We went for a walk around the city centre for a while in the afternoon and stumbled across the Ebrat Museum, a rather gruesome discovery. Under the Shah's ruling this building was originally used as a detention centre run by the SAVAK, the secret police in Iran, established by the Shah with the help of the American Intelligence service. They operated from 1957 to 1979. They were a widely feared organization, because of the methods they used to get information from people i.e torture methods. It was here that I saw a very different and sad side to the Pahlavi dynasty, very popular at that time. People who spoke out against the regime were imprisoned here, some for many years. The museum exhibits the many atrocities that went on and we had a tour around the prison cells, torture chambers and interrogation chambers. It wasn't pretty :-(.

In the evening, a cousin of Ebi's father and his family came to visit us for a few hours and late on Sunday night we went with them to a park in North Tehran to relax for a bit after dinner and drink some tea. At night, parks everywhere tend to be really busy as its people's main way of having fun, whether its sitting together chatting or playing ball games. We had brought a badminton set along with us so played a few rounds before going home. I've got some photos of us in the park but haven't had a chance to upload. I didn't get any other photos of Tehran, as on Monday, it was a religious holiday and everything was closed. Ebi and I just rested in the house and packed up our stuff.

Got a taxi at 2am to the airport and our flight was at 5.30am. I'm very sad to have left Ebi's friends and family behind. Iran is such a large country and visiting Shiraz and Isfahan only just scratched the surface. It was an amazing experience and I'm looking forward to going back again, hopefully next year.