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And Now for something completely different

Jordan- a small country in the Middle East full of history, wonders, deserts and the lowest place on Earth.

And we’re here!!! After 11 years of thinking about coming, we’re actually here!!

We started in the capital city of Amman and will be exploring the country for a couple of weeks. I have to admit that I do feel a little apprehension along with my excitement.

Instructions from the accommodation at our next stop. For darn sure we’ll make sure to turn right before the Military Checkpoint!!! And the border with Syria.

But that’s tomorrow’s adventure. Yesterday and today were spent exploring the capital city of Amman. With a population of 3 million, it’s a BIG place so we stuck to the downtown area, as many do. We walked up and down hills and stairs and busy streets and OLD ruins.

Walking back to our hotel after dinner.
The Roman Theatre seats 6000 people and was “probably built in the 2nd century CE, during the reign of Antoninus Pius.” (according to our Lonely Planet guidebook). It was restored in the 1950s and is sometimes used as a concert venue in the summers, which would be so cool to experience!
The Citadel sits atop Jebel al Qala’a, the highest hill in Amman. This is what remains of the Roman Temple of Hercules.
The views of the city from the Citadel are spectacular!
Lots of stairs and steep roads, murals and beige buildings
Our hotel and Jalal the manager / owner?

We met some good people in our 2 days wandering around. The manager of our hotel, Jalal, was very helpful and always wanting to keep the guests happy. He was NOT impressed when we admitted that we couldn’t figure out the heat the first night and we were COLD. He immediately grabbed 2 extra blankets and took us straight to the room to get the heater going.

Another memorable experience was meeting the tailor. After Paul bought pants that were too long on him, we were told to follow this guy and we were led through the streets, down a set of stairs to a messy hall with stuff and garbage all over the place and, in the corner was a little room where he introduced us to a guy with a sewing machine and then left. The tailor quickly measured Paul’s leg, cut the pants and sewed up the hem. We were told it might cost between 2-3 JOD but he said 1. We gave him 2 and he tried to refuse but we insisted. He then asked if we would like tea, and of course we said yes and he ran upstairs, came back down with 2 cups of tea on a tray and then downstairs he went as there was another customer already waiting for him. We were told that that’s the Jordanien way – never accept something without offering something in return.

After the hills of the day and chills of the night before, we decided a Turkish Bath would be just the thing. Did we ever feel clean!!!

But, there’s one more story to tell before I sign off… It involves a lot of whining about the hills, and someone’s new pants which apparently weighed 30 lbs that day and was chafing the hair off his legs, and that certain someone wore the wrong shirt and was too hot (because of all the hills), and claimed we were going in circles because he was sure he’d seen that building before (which we had because we had climbed that same hill first thing in the morning), and a lot of “are we nearly there?” and “how much further?” comments.

Does this scene like familiar to anyone? it should – there is a similar picture from Ubud back in January. When Paul starts complaining I always get the giggles, which rarely helps the situation so I walk ahead and giggle to myself because I can usually still hear him!

And then we finally reached our destination.

My expression when he caught up to me and told me the spa was closed. “Didn’t you see the huge closed sign?” Fortunately it wasn’t and we enjoyed a very expensive VIP package spa (because someone felt they deserved a little pampering after their hard day).
Amman was a great start to our Jordan adventure! Looking forward to all that is ahead of us!

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