Day 21 (Tehran)

Hello Tehran, this is the Irish jury calling, and here are our votes....

What a day to arrive in Tehran, the day after the presidential election when a riot starts and we're told not to leave our hotel! We went for food in the revolving restaurant on top of our hotel shortly after arriving from Zanjan. It was a beautiful place, not long opened according to the manager and serving Arnemian food. He offered us shared starters and mains for around $12 a head which was pretty expensive for what we've seen so far in Iran, but given the quality of what we got and the vast quantity of food that was laid out in front of us it was well worth it!

It was while we were at the dinner table that we noticed something wasn't quite right. There was thunder and lightening outside and the sky was looking pretty threatening. We were watching the lightening when we saw plumes of thick black smoke rising a bit away from the hotel so we thought something had been struck by lightening. We continued eating and being merry watching for more lightening and keeping an eye on the progress of the smoke. It was only when a second plume of smoke become visible that I started to wonder if something was gone wrong (the paranoia in me thought we had a series of bombs going off). Within a few minutes I had an answer – one of the girls had been watching BBC News and had seen something about riots in Tehran as a result of the outcome of the presidential election. That's what the smoke was about – two police motorbikes had been set on fire as supporters of Raza's guy (the one who was going to change Iran and try make them more Westernised) showed their disgust with the election results.

Immediately I was in a bit of a panic thinking that everyone at home was going to have seen or heard about what was going and be freaking out and my phone's not working here (damn Meteor..you do all they ask and it still doesn't work :( ). So I was down from the 16th floor to the ground looking for internet access so I would text home faster than I've ever moved before. I've finally got on the Skype bandwagon and got to talk to people instead of just texting from the internet..yay!

I spent a bit of time checking in with people and then went in search of the rest of the crew. A good few were watching what was going on from the 15th floor stairwell as the riots were spreading and getting closer to the hotel. I wasn't scared about what was going on until I saw fires lighting on the street right outside the hotel and saw tear gas being thrown at people to get them to disperse (that was a first for me and not something I was particularly happy to see). April and I went to check with Kim if there was anything we could do or needed to do – the advice was to stay in the hotel until morning (like I was gonna venture out with that going on!). Everyone was accounted for in the hotel so we kept a low profile watching what was going on outside from our post on the 15th floor. The small fires that were set using wheelie bins and wooden crates outside the hotel were put out really quickly so we weren't in any real danger.

Before all the excitement of the riots we visited the Soltanieh Dome and the Jewel Museum to get a bit of culture into the day. The dome is the 3rd largest in the world, and the jewels in the museum included one of (if not the) largest diamond in the world. The hotel we were in was the fanciest so far (we were told not to get too used to it) – Nadia and I lucked out and got a suite with 2 balconies and oodles of space. There was a single bed and the largest bed I've ever seen (I still managed to end up spread eagle diagonally in it) that I got to have cos I was first into the room :)

For a photos from Tehran click here.