After yesterdays amazing amazing sightseeing in Esfahan (hence no words, just pictures) we got up very early to extend our visa. We had to cross one of the histroic bridges again - in the morning mood the bridge and the whole city was very beautiful - even despite lunatic traffic. The Visa extension went very smooth - we got to the office around 8 and were immediately sent to a Bank Melli to pay 300.000 Rial. The most difficult thing was finding the bank - it was pretty far away and we got a bit lost, but with the help of Ali everthing worked out. We had just asked him for the way to the bank and he immediately turned into our guide: leading us there, navigating through the chaos at the bank branch and filling the persian forms. Once we got back to the office we had to fill out some more forms, attach 2 pictures of our beautiful sunburned faces, photocopies of the passport and visa pages and the passport itself, find the guy to control and stamp it and find the guy who processes the extension itself. We were told to come back at lunchtime as the guy putting the final signature under everything would only be back then. At 10 we had cycled to the closeby Armenian quarter. It is called Jolfa, because some centuries ago most of the population of the old city of Jolfa (see Day 137-139) was moved here - mainly because the rulers wanted their artistic talents for their then capital city. When looking at the Vank cathedral we understood why - from the outside it is nice, but from inside it is amazing (unfortunately no pictures allowed, despite pretty high entry price of 30000 Rial). It is full of frescoes from several centuries, some of them very hieronymusboschy gruesome. There are several other Armenian churches around and the overall athmosphere is pretty relaxed, very European. Shortly after noon we returned to the office and soon received our passports with a perfect visa extension: + 30 days, counted from the expiry date of the old visa. This means I have time to reach the persian gulf until mid of January, yeah !
To celebrate our success we went to a small cycle tour to the western outskirts of Esfahan. We followed the river and found another historic bridge.
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