After a week in Oman we flew to Amman. So confusing.
Amman is the capital of Jordan, which is a tiny country squeezed between Palestine, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The welcome-to-Jordan airport experience rated as the world’s second dumbest airport (coming and going) – after Chennai, (where we were nearly deported).
Amman is beautiful. Steep, steep hills set around old Roman ruins. An amphitheater in the bottom of the city and an ancient citadel looming over it. It felt busy and confused after gracious, calm Oman. One of those places where there are 8 people doing every job in the shoutiest most confusing fashion, and achieving nothing.
There was a huge, traditional Arab wedding outside our hotel room one night (at 10pm – WAY past Nana-o’clock) which was noisy, and clappy and fabulous.
There is a very, very good Roman site called Jerash just north of Amman. The kids hadn’t seen a real Roman city (well, there aren’t many around) so it was very cool for them to walk up avenues and see temples and fountains etc.
We saw 3 extremely well preserved amphitheaters in one day and had amphitheater saturation. A novel experience.
After looking around Amman we drove south towards Petra. We stopped at Madaba and Mt Nebo to look at churches, mosaics and the view of Israel and Palestine, looking over the Dead Sea. I enjoyed the view – I GET geography, but I don’t really GET Old Testament, so I wasn’t sure what I was looking at a lot of the time. I should have gone to Sunday School. Or a Madrassa.
The mosaics were pretty cool, especially the ancient map of the Holy Land. Ate OK food. Lots of cucumber salads, eggplant, flat bread and hummus. Very similar to Omani food but more flies and less dates.