Steph and I went to Iran with a friend who was going back to visit her family.

Steph and the abandoned palace. The history here is rich and the people are all storytellers but buildings like this are left to decay.

Steph and the abandoned palace. The history here is rich and the people are all storytellers but buildings like this are left to decay.

Shemshak, a ski village a couple hours north of Tehran.

Shemshak, a ski village a couple hours north of Tehran.

One last photo from Esfahan. The gate to a seriously enormous mosque. Everything is self-supporting arches. There’s one square in the middle of the mosque and when you speak there it resonates through the whole building. Steph aptly calls it a #mathsmiracle and it’s sad that nobody knows how to design like this anymore.

One last photo from Esfahan. The gate to a seriously enormous mosque. Everything is self-supporting arches. There’s one square in the middle of the mosque and when you speak there it resonates through the whole building. Steph aptly calls it a #mathsmiracle and it’s sad that nobody knows how to design like this anymore.

I can’t get over the wooden columns holding up pretty much everything old in Iran, including the balcony roof in this 17th century palace.

I can’t get over the wooden columns holding up pretty much everything old in Iran, including the balcony roof in this 17th century palace.

Persepolis - an enormous palace complex where each king tried to one-up the last in grandeur. Then Alexander came through and burned the whole thing around 500 BC. The style of the time was all-wooden buildings with a stone archway for each door, and so for this palace that’s all that’s left

Persepolis - an enormous palace complex where each king tried to one-up the last in grandeur. Then Alexander came through and burned the whole thing around 500 BC. The style of the time was all-wooden buildings with a stone archway for each door, and so for this palace that’s all that’s left

Very traditional.

Very traditional.