Finally got some internet access in my room so a quick post. I'm very tired; the 11.5 hour time difference is not letting me sleep, no matter how tired I am, so I'm running on fumes after a first long day yesterday.
Short answer: Tehran is ugly and wonderful. No sights, unless you include a mass of interesting people, shops, insane traffic, and a vibrancy you find in a big city. Iranians are as predicted; kind, interested, a good sense of humor. Yesterday I saw some of the palaces of the previous monarchy, got a history lesson from my excellent guide, a former career officer in the Iranian Air Force, talked for three hours with a professor from Tehran University who was a classmate of the President Ahmadinejad from elementary to high school, saw Imam Khomeini's home and baffled the locals with my friendship pin of crossed American and Iranian flags--even the ultra conservatives love it (or I think love it more than liberals, who find the current "Islamic" flag distasteful).
Today my guide is driving to Yazd while I fly there this evening. I hope today to visit Khomeini's tomb and the surrounding cemetery where those who died in the Iran-Iraq War are buried, attend Friday Prayers at Tehran University, see the former US embassy, hit a museum or two and then on to the airport. I don't know how much I can see or appreciate on 3 hours of sleep, but that is what they made coffee for.
