LIL AND JOHN: Amman Revisited and The Dead Sea, Jordan

We caught a bus to the airport to pick Kerri up from her Etihad flight from Dubai. Her baggage got lost between Melbourne and Amman so she arrived with just what she was wearing, a small day bag and a few necessities. This was probably due to a combination of a couple of things; the new check-in clerk at Auckland airport and the two hour delay of the flight taking off. She was being paged as she dashed to the boarding gate for her connecting flight.

After registering her loss at the Amman airport and getting a clerk's contact number we headed back to central Amman. She managed to get a few hours sleep on the Auckland to Melbourne leg and another 8 hours on the way to Dubai so she was pretty relaxed.

Downtown, Amman
The next day we visited the Roman ruins: the Nymphaeum (fountain), and the restored Amphitheatre. Later we climbed up to the citadel and Umayyad Palace ruins overlooking the city.

Kerri and the tourist policewoman at the amphitheatre.

The hotel was a easy place to meet people and share experiences. We met Mark from Capetown, South Africa and went out for a meal with him. Mark was keen to find somewhere to eat and have a beer but we had not found anywhere in downtown that served food and alcohol. When Mark asked a shop keeper if the place next to him sold beer he directed us down an alley to a small bar ( The Jordan Bar ) where we could buy a local beer called Petra and it was sold in half litre cans of either 8 or 10% alcohol.

Our American friend, Dan, arrived at the hotel and was put in the room next to us by the friendly staff at the hotel who knew we were expecting him. We met Dan in 1981 while backpacking in the Andes. His schedule happened to coincide with ours so we were able to meet up and travel a bit together.

There are not many nice places to eat in downtown. One restaurant had 3 floors, the first floor had the food set out in bainmaries including sheeps' heads floating in broth, the second floor was for men only and the top floor was for women and families. You could point to what you wanted and the waiter brought it up the two flights to your table or you could choose something from the menu. The photos of the dishes on the menu did not represent anything in the bainmaries and the translations didn't help describe what was in the dish.

Another restaurant we found had waiters in jackets and only an Arabic menu. The waiter offered the night's special and two other dishes: a lamb dish and a chicken dish. I once ordered the chicken dish and found it was too much to eat: half a roasted chicken, rice, and three piles of boiled vegetables. When I requested it the second time with only one vegetable and half of the half chicken I was told no, I had to have the whole dish. They serve other meals like sheep brains and stuffed intestines but only offer the tourists the most expensive dishes. It also had a pastry shop of sticky sweet baklavas.

Filo pastries with pistachios and sugar syrup

The hotel served breakfast in the lounge which was so handy: a boiled egg, triangles of spreadable cheese, jam and pita bread. After breakfast with Dan we shared a taxi to Petra with stops along the way.

The first stop was to look at a pile of rocks which the driver called 'lozz'. After some research we realized he was pointing out the pillar of salt that Lot's wife had turned into when she looked back at the city of Sodom.

The next stop was the Dead Sea. We had to pay to use the facilities at the Amman beach resort and to float in the sea.

John, Dan and Kerri relaxing.
By the time we left Amman' Kerri's bags had still not arrived so she had to swim in my pyjamas but enjoyed the float nevertheless. The salt dried out our skin in no time.

The next stop was at the Crusader fortress of Karak