Our overall impression of Iran was very positive. However, from the country itself, we haven’t seen that much. We couldn’t really relax with Pakistan in mind. The population was a nice experience for us. These people are really the most friendly, most warm and most hospitable people we ever come across. We were welcomed everywhere and people were always smiling when they saw us. They offered us tea from their car, brandishing their thermos. Everyone waved at us, filmed us and took pictures. We are definitely famous now on the Iranian Youtube, haha. Almost everywhere we went we were invited by people to stay in their home and to have dinner with them. Never they asked for anything in return....except then that we had to promise them to come back one day.
The part of the country we passed was actually a big desert with occasional green between. However, the north is very green and fertile with beaches on the Caspian Sea. Many world travellers are very positive about the north so this seems really worth to visit once. In the south you will find the historic cities like Shiraz, about 3000 years old city, and really seems to be magnificent.
Maybe for a next trip ....

Now we will put the travel advice of Foreign Affairs under the loop:
Many countries / areas have a travel warning. Read this carefully but then put it down quietly beside you. Otherwise you can just go to the Costa del Sol or the Turkish Riviera; you won’t get much further then there. Specifically for Iran the travel advice based on a single event in the Sista-Balochistan region that occurred more than six years ago. This story also lives in Iran and it is an isolated case of a criminal who was caught and hanged shortly thereafter. Careful, you always have to be, but this also counts for many places across Europe.
The traffic in Iran is defined here as the most dangerous in the world, which we saw nothing about. They also advise against driving at night which we have actually done almost every day. The roads are reallygood and traffic is less busy at night so we don’t see the point. FA recommends to ride with local drivers. We did this twice and it was the only time we felt unsafe, due a number of near-death experiences. Perhaps we had bad luck with our drivers but the rest are fairly quiet drivers. The only dangerous part about the Iranian roads are the traffic barriers, hardly visible at night, which are way too high and too short made. There are a lot of speed cameras, both manned and unmanned (but no fine this time).

If we've got you warm for a holiday in Iran, you should really worry mainly about the financial part. Due to the international sanctions against Iran, you can’t withdraw any money here so you should have everything already in the bag for your trip. According to FA credit cards are accepted in some of the major hotel and obviously there is always your embassy if you would have any problems.

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