The Long Walk
Pomegranite juice stand on Valiasr.
Click here to see a flash slideshow of featured images from our walk from the bottom of Valiasr Street to the top.
“What time 2morrow?” I smsed.
“8.”
“Yr nuts. 9.”
At 10:30 the next morning, Angus McDowall and I arrived at the foot of Valiasr street. It’s a bustling area that features Tehran’s railway station and a digital pollution monitor. The pollution was below the warning levels as we set off up the street.
Valiasr street is the longest, continuous city street in the Middle East. It runs the north-south length of Tehran from the train station to Tajrish.
At one point, Angus got pulled into a discussion about world affairs with a group of men who were gathered around a tray filled with dates and “denmarki” (delicious pastries named for Denmark). “We don’t want war,” one man told him. “But if war comes, we will fight. You have to remember that when we kill in war, we are victorious. When we are killed in war, we are also victorious.”
One of the young men Angus was speaking with tagged along for awhile, worried that we would get lost. I am not sure how that would be possible since we were planning to stay on one street for about 8 hours…
My favorite places were the fruit juice shop where I had amazing carrot juice followed by a chaser of sweet lemon juice (not lemonade: sweet lemons are an Iranian fruit unlike any other that I have ever tasted. Its taste is unlike a Myer lemon or any other sweetish lemon that I had before visiting Iran.) and the stamp shop with the owner and his one inch long pinkie nail and the 150 year old collection of stamps.
Oh yeah, and we had amazing Gemeh at a traditional restaurant off of Valiasr Square.
Look at what others have to say about Valiasr:
First read what Angus had to say about our walk: Vali Asr
Avenue Vali Asr
Sycamores of Valiasr Street
Inside Tehran
Photos from Sa-ee Park
Click here to see a flash slideshow of featured images from our walk from the bottom of Valiasr Street to the top.
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:28 am
Mashallah! What a walk. My knees are still aching. But the juice was good, the craic was better and some of those murals were great. What a shame they’ve whitewashed the ghostly Khomeini one at Vanak. Next time we do this, the other half of Ashtary design will have no excuse…