Day 245 6th October 2017
The plan to explore Yazd was to play tour guides to ourselves. To inform us, we had tips from other travellers, ideas from our online searches, and a city outline from our first starlit wander last night. Despite all this, we left the hotel with no plan in mind except to explore.
What a city to get lost in – long mud-brick tunnels, winding streets lined with multi-storey mudbrick buildings, windcatchers and minarets poking into the skyline, shops and bazaars filled with colour and food. And the always present gentle, welcoming, generous Iranian people.
Our discoveries included the ancient windcatchers- chimney-like structures capturing breezes that waft by and funnelling them down into buildings. An early airconditioner, designed to catch wind from each direction through narrow, elegant-looking slits.
Rafeiean House, a building thought to be about 250 years old, now a cultural space. In the central courtyard around a fountain pool and filled with plants a coffee shop. Arts and crafts adorned the walls and a library for tourists to explore.
The Jame Mosque, a Friday mosque was built around the 14th – 15th century. Its towering minarets can be seen from around Yazd. The tall entrance gate showcases the rich blue tile work
Dolat Abad Gardens – on classic lines with pavilions at both ends with gardens lining water channels, featuring waterfalls and fountains. Each space was filled with selfie-takers including a group of young women taking time to pose each other in model-like poses around a small pool in one of the rooms.
