The Full Vacation story Jordan Easter break 2010

PICTURES TO FOLLOW

THE STORY

We flew into Amman, which looks a little like San Francisco, lots of hills and lots and lots of people. No where in any of my trip reading did it mention that this was a hilly city. Good thing I like to walk up hills!
We stayed at a modest hostel, which turned out to be perfect for us. What a good way to introduce Anna to hostel life which offers inexpensive housing, friendly interesting people and a way to see many things in a short time.

After looking around Amman for a day, which is very different than Kuwait in a more-alive sort of way, we had dinner with my friends from Kuwait. They were in the same hostel, which was serendipity not planned. It was good to see familiar faces.

We visited Jeresh, a fascinating city of Roman ruins. It was my first experience with Roman ruins (if you don't count the Roman Collesium in Rome) and they were fascinating. I know I mentioned this in an earlier blog but I'm still trying to get my head around the experience of Anna being followed around the place by Arab school girls who seems absolutely intriguied by my white daughter.

"Hello, can I take your picture?" "what's your name?" "You are so pretty".

After about the 10th time it was funny, after the 20th time it got a little scary. I asked Anna if she resembled some famous hip hop singer I was unaware of. We befriended (and somewhat adopted) this fine Canadian lad who was on a 45 day trek around the Middle East. He was in need of some parenting (so I thought...okay so he was Ben's age and I had a weak moment). It ended up that he was with us for the next 3 days which was fun. He's hopefully headed off to Japan next year to teach and as Anna has proclaimed that's her next destination, it's always good to have a contact!

The next day we headed off on an all day adventure which took us to Madaba (city of Mosaics), Mount Nebo (where Moses saw the promised land), the Dead Sea (yes, you really do float and not sink), Shobruk castle (a truly interesting stronghold on top of a mountain with a spectacular view), tea with a very fascinating older bedoin man ( who got my husband up dancing!) ending in Wadi Musa, home of Petra.

We regrouped with the friends from Q8 and spent the day wandering through the desert and truly unbelieveable caves and carved sandstone structures in the valley. The pictures don't do it justice, but I completely understand why it is one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World (at least according to this website I found). Our friend Aaron decided that he wanted to see Aaron's tomb (his namesake) which was a 3 hour trek into the desert, so off we headed. Fortunately (for me) after about 2 hours of walking, his wife decided she was way too pregnant to continue (she's a PE teacher who is in great shape but she had a moment of wisdom). David gallently elected to stay back with her and I joined in to provide some female bonding. (ha...I was tired of walking too!)

So Anna, Jake (Aaron's son) the canadian and Aaron continued to climb up and up and up to eventually see the tomb. Guess it was pretty cool. While they were gone, the three of us enjoyed two hours of almost complete silence other than the occasional sound of donkey's braying echoing off the cliffs and random bedoin children playing. It was an eerie, magical time.

We returned to Amman the next day via a public bus which was quite the experience. Public buses in Jordan don't leave a destination until every single seat in the bus is filled. And if that means that we all CRAM TOGETHER, then so be it. David struck up a conversation with an intelligent, somewhat boring Dutch guy and I pretended to sleep and not get sick from the fast moving bus, unairconditioned bus. Anna dutifully buried her nose in a book. She's an amazing traveller who can put up with almost anything silently.

Our last day in Amman, Anna and I had the Turkish Spa Experience complete with soaking in a steam room, getting our dead skin scrubbed off and a full body oil massage. It was okay, maybe they were a little too exhuberant in scrubbing off the dead skin for me. But now I can say I've had the experience.

Jordan is a wonderful place full of diversity both in the land and people, with enough Biblical history to be amazing and enough variety to keep even the hardened traveller excited. It was truly the perfect place to be on vacation for me. I needed a real rest of body, mind and soul after an exhausting three months of work. It was just the medicine I needed.