Jordan Day 3 Floating in the dead sea

On our third day in Jordan our trusty cab picked us up at 9:30 and we started off on the drive to the Jordan Valley and the dead sea. The ride takes you up the gorgeous kings Highway, which early on in the trip runs you by Shobak Castle, an old crusader castle that underwent a famously long siege by our friend Salah Al Din, you'll remember he's the guy responsible for the citadel in Cairo too. There were a ton of stone cannonballs left inside and a good portion of it is restored, and then left to crumble again, but for 5 Dinar we got an interesting tour, and it only took us about 2 miles off the main road. We wanted to keep it moving so we passed on one other little crusader castle and made our way up and over the mountains. The road has a lot of switchbacks, and would probably be a lot of fun to drive in a souped up convertible with a stick shift. When you reach the top there's a great place to take pictures and a place that sells coffee tea and sodas and provides a much needed bathroom break. On the way down you can see across to Israel, and finally the dead see comes into view. There are a few picture opportunities along the way, and eventually the driver just learned not to bother asking me, of course I wanted to stop to take a picture. We even bumped into the guy who originally picked us up in Amman when we were near the salt crystals, and he set us up to pick us up at the hotel the next day for our ride to the airport. It was perfect. We then pulled into the hotel, where they actually take their security seriously. You should have seen the size of the tire spikes at the front gate, if you got the crazy idea to run through the gate. We weren't quite prepared for the temperature difference between Petra and Sweimeh. When we got to the hotel, the Jordan Valley Marriott Resort, our room wasn't ready, and we let the hold our bags so we could wander about the grounds. We went down to the dead sea to check it out, and then found ourselves some lunch at the sports bar. The hotel is absolutely amazing, and we once again regretted not booking more time at a place. The pool is gorgeous, and the access to the dead sea is right on the hotel property. Our swim in the dad sea was amazing, and the feeling of buoyancy is stranger than you can possibly imagine. Anything you do makes you bob right up out of the water. The taste seemed saltier than just taking a mouthful of table salt, and trying to swim face down is a futile effort. The buoyancy of the rest of your body pushes your face straight in, and that is not water you want in your eyes. We spent the rest of the afternoon down by the sea shore and at the pool, even taking a few runs down the water slide. We settled on Italian food one more time, avoiding a final buffet, and tried a different Jordanian wine that we didn't enjoy quite as much as the one we'd had in Petra. The desserts however, were absolutely amazing. I ordered a makeup serving of tiramisu that definitely lived up to my expectations, and W ordered a panna cotta that was amazing. We stopped by the really nice lobby bar, and had a couple of drinks to settle in, they pour one heck of a mojito in Jordan it turns out. Saed, our driver, met us in the lobby at seven the last morning, and dropped us off safely at the airport. I managed to get through customs without incident, and we really liked the personal entertainment system and our favorite Jordanian wine on the flight to Frankfurt. Once in Frankfurt we stopped and had a nice, but expensive German meal, with a delicious German beer to go with it. There were some tense moments in the airport since they waited until 15 minutes before departure to give us boarding passes, but they did manage to find us a couple of first class seats for the trip home. That brings us to the end of this adventure, I've been to the library already for the next set of travel books, so it's only a matter of time until the travel itch needs to be scratched again. Here are the full Albums for your enjoyment.

Egypt Part One

egypt and jordan

Jordan Day 2, Rewarding our Hard Work

We actually volunteered to get up early on our second day in Jordan, and it totally paid off. Our driver met us at the hotel at 7, and down the hill we went again into the Wadi Musa valley. Wadi Musa loosely translates to the Valley of Moses, making this our 2nd Moses encounter of the trip. It is said that in this valley Moses drove a stick into a rock to find water, and also here is Mount Hor, where Moses' brother Aaron is said to be buried. When we arrived at the visitor center we marched right in and signed up for a tour. It turns out that 6 grad students from Stanford were waiting there for a tour to start and we made their group big enough to leave. We bought two day passes, thinking that we might go back in the morning the next day, since the second day is only about $7 more than a one day ticket. There's only one way in, so it starts by covering the same ground that we had the night before on the Petra by Night tour. You could tell as you were walking there were probably things to see on the way to the treasury, but the luminaries only lit the path nearby, so it was all dark and mysterious. On the way through in the morning, you see all the vibrant colors, and all the carvings along the way. Walking through the Siq and first laying eyes on the Treasury is truly a powerful experience, and our guide had us go through one by one to make it more personal. Our tour was informative, learning about who lived in Petra, and how they built it and survived sieges and takeover attempts for long periods of time. The Romans finally managed to take over by poisoning the water supply. My two tips for the would-be traveler to Petra are: 1 the gates open at 6, get there as early as you can before the tour groups arrive and the vendors set up, it makes it a completely different experience. 2 Make the effort to go all the way up to the monastery. The views are incredible, and there is a little place to rest with a drink stand built right into a cave. It's really interesting to listen to the Bedouin vendors switch seamlessly between English Italian french and Arabic to make a sale. I felt painfully under educated knowing only how to speak English, Spanish, some German and hello and thank you in a few other random languages. After the official part our our tour got done, we were free to walk around and explore. You have the choice of climbing up to the Monastery, or the high place of sacrifice, or to just turn around and go back. We spent some time at the museum and gift shop, and then began the trek up to the monastery. As the crow flies it's not that far, and you could pay for a donkey to get you there, but it's a lot of stairs, over some narrow areas that didn't make it look like it would be a very comfortable donkey ride. We walked, and took lots of breaks in the shadows where a cool breeze would frequently blow, and were rewarded with a beautiful monastery structure, some goats, and incredible views down over the valley. We sat down in the cave and had a coke to recharge and then went on our way. Our original plan was to go back and walk up to the high place of sacrifice, but we'll just have to save that one for a return trip, because after getting back from the monastery, we were pretty beat. There's a couple of restaurants down in the valley and we settled on the buffet (ugh) at the basin restaurant. The food was acceptable, and helped refresh us after our hike. After lunch, we wandered back out to the front gate, where our cab driver said to go to one shop and the owner would call him to come pick us up. Of course he wanted to look around while we waited, and when he and W couldn't agree on the price of a camel wool and silk blend scarf, she said, "I'm sorry I'm cheap", and he said "not cheap, just... difficult" a good line, but $25 for a scarf that we could load up on in china for under $5 per didn't make a lot of since. Our driver arrived, and back to the hotel we went. Back at the hotel after a shower we sat at the bar and enjoyed a beverage and a chance to get off of our feet. W went to the spa to get a foot massage, while I read some more about Petra and our next destination. We met some other Americans at the bar, told them a little about what to expect on their Petra tour tomorrow, and recommended the Jordanian wine to them. We compared Egypt war stories with them since that's where they'd just come from too, and had some good laughs about our experiences. There was another beautiful sunset right outside the windows, and we eventually went right back to dinner at the Italian place just because we'd enjoyed it so much the night before. Our wine was right there where we'd left off, and was just as delicious with my rack of lamb as it was with my steak the night before. My one complaint about the whole experience was the tiramisou, it was just not right. But that's minor in the grander scheme of how amazing our Petra experience was. We stopped by for one more drink at the bar and then went back to the room before we fell asleep in their chairs. We decided to let our 2nd day at Petra go, neither of us having the energy left to get up early and go for a hike in the morning.

Egypt Day 12 and Jordan Day 1

On the 12th day of Egypt, my true love gave to me, a relaxing day by the pool. That's right, on our last day in town, we did practically nothing. We spent far too much time getting things straightened out for moving on to Jordan. For some reason contacting Marriott reservations in Cairo turned into a huge fiasco, and we finally broke down and sprung for a call to the US, to have our savior Francie call the US Marriott number. That fixed everything. We spent a good portion of the afternoon reading and napping around the pool, where a very nice gentleman refused to let us go thirsty. It turns out they pour one heck of a long island iced tea. We grabbed some dinner at the cafe, and got ourselves packed up to leave in the morning. The rest of the girls were headed back to the states, so we had our favorite van guy come pick them up at 1:30 a.m. and we thought we'd communicated that we'd like for him to come back and pick us up at 7, but by 7:10 he still hadn't arrived. We had the hotel grab us a cab, and for the first time all trip, they worked out the rate for us before we got in. We had to work to communicate that W and I were going to one place and Dave was going someplace else, but we eventually got it figure out. Unfortunately once we got out of the cab at what we thought was our terminal it turned out to be wrong, and there's no efficient way to walk between the two. So we had to wait for the bus. Meanwhile a cab driver wanted to take us over there, and the longer we waited the lower his fare got, but we eventually held out for the bus. When you're nervous about whether your doing the right thing those waits seem like an eternity especially when the more nervous you look the more often the cab driver comes over. The bus eventually came, and off to our terminal we went. We checked ourselves in and got some seats right away which is always nice, and were ready to head off to passport control. By this point in the trip I am by far the brownest I've been in years, and with my features and hair, it's hard to tell exactly what you're looking at when you see me. So when the border agent hands me back my passport I tried to be polite, and said the Arabic word for thank you: shokrun, and started walking. The agent quickly stands up, whips around and says with an angry look in his eye "Are you an Arab"? I stand there frozen, and whimper out a "no...". He says "But you speak Arabic"? With my wits back about me, I manage to get out "Just hello, and thank you". He looks less stressed by that point, and lets me through. I check my underwear, and am ready to go get on the plane. In Egypt they don't even have gates like we're used to here. You always get on a bus, even if it only goes one hundred feet out to where your plane is. Royal Jordanian's seats are nice, comparable to the premium economy of domestic carriers. The service was solid, and the food was good too. In no time we'd landed in Amman. We'd had the Marriott in Petra arrange a car for us, and sure enough a nice gentleman was waiting for us as soon as we got out of the terminal. Having your name on a sign does make you feel like a rock star. He took us out to a cab that was waiting, and off we went to Wadi Musa. It's about a 3 hour trip from Amman, and there are a few military looking checkpoints along the way but they were more interested in taxi licenses and such than W and I in the back seat. The driver already knew that we were in petra for 2 days and then heading to the Jordan valley, and signed himself up to drive us from petra there, and from there to the airport. and as many trips from the hotel down to Petra as we needed. Having our needs anticipated for a change was a nice touch. I wanted desperately to stay awake for the whole t.rip, but eventually the early morning caught up with me. I woke up just as we were getting to Wadi Musa, which means I was awake just in time for a photo op. We arrived shortly after at the Petra Marriott, where it was calm and peaceful compared to the lobby in Cairo. We got a room with a great view, and the front desk strongly recommended we check out Petra by night. We'd read good things about it, so we got tickets and they would arrange our driver to get us there. That gave us time to grab some snacks and a Jordanian beer. There's an amazing outdoor patio overlooking the canyon, with drink specials during sunset hours. We got ourselves ready for Petra by night, layering up for the significant drop in temperature we were experiencing there. Up high at the hotel there was quite a cold wind, so we were prepared for the worst. Our cab showed up right on time and took us down the winding roads to the Petra visitor center. We gathered there, and when the time comes you start the walk down to Petra there are over 1500 luminaries there to light your path, and they ask everyone to be quiet so the experience is really wonderful. You don't realize that most of the way is down hill, and since you're down in a canyon, the weather is not so bad. Eventually you get to the treasury where there are hundreds of luminaries and a woven mat for everyone to sit on. They bring you a nice warm cup of mint tea, and then the performance begins. One man plays an ancient stringed instrument and sings, and the acoustics from the canyon walls make the sound so pure. After the singing someone begins to play a flute from inside the treasury, eventually walking out and moving around the crowd. I have never heard a sound like the flute that night, it was as if sound completely wrapped around you. It's not all fun and games, you're on the ground and there are rocks underneath you in the sand, but I'd go back every night given the opportunity. After taking the time for pictures we made the treck back up to the visitors center, which made us realize how downhill the trip in was. Our cab was waiting for us, and then back to the hotel for some dinner. We decided to try the italian restaurant and were pleasantly suprised on all counts. I had a filet that only cost $16, try finding a filet for that price in the states, and we sampled a really wonderful Jordanian wine. We didn't finish the bottle, but they were nice enough to hold it until the next day for us. After a long traveling day we crashed pretty early, aiming to be out the door at 7 the next day.