November 2019
Our first task in Jordan was for Sally to get her hair cut. We have found waiting till we hit a big city for this to be done the best option as this one of those times when your really don't want instructions to be misunderstood.
Amman is a bit of an odd place as by law, we understand, all buildings must be clad in white stone which does give a strange uniformity to the city. The consequence of this so that the current source of white stone is in the far east of Jordan so between Azraq and Amman there is a stream of big trucks carry huge boulders and of course the roads weren't built for this type of traffic so are slowly being chewed up.
The other big oddity is water. Now in pretty much all modern cities water is processed in a treatment plant and then fed to the tap in your house via a series of pipes. This is not the case in Jordan as there are no underground pipes. Instead once a week a water tanker will fill up the header tanks in your apartment block. Not to sure what happens if someone accidentally leaves a tap running and wipes the whole apartments water supply for the week.
There were a couple of big sites we wanted to see in Amman - The Citadel and the Amphitheater. The citadel, well ruins of it, sit at the top of one of the Seven hills that made up Amman. Amman, with its population of 4 million, now well and truly has burst out of the sevens hills. The ruins are quite nice and dates back to the Roman era. By the looks of it there was once a massive statue of Hercules here - sadly all that was visible was his fist and a bit of one elbow.
For the Coldplay fans out there this is where they played a sunrise and sunset concert for their new album for a small select audience (which included Pete and Katrina).
You know how it is that some people will look at a sea shell and think "Hmmmm, if I put a bit of pipe cleaner or driftwood on it I can make a swan and fob it off to a tourist in a gift shop." Well, we found out that this is not what you would call an original idea as saw this 1,500+ year old bit of tat.
The Amphitheater is a pleasent downhill walk from the citadel which gives some nice views of it. Quite an impressive sight as can still seat about 6,000 people and is used for concerts and the like.
Interesting looking at the people relaxing and socialising in the plaza in front of the Amphitheater because, even though it is a massive tourist attraction the bulk of the people were locals. Including traditional tea seller (we think).
One of Pete and Katrina's weekend escapes is to head out of Amman, down the coast of the Dead Sea and spend a few hours wandering through one of the impressive Wadis that feed into the Dead Sea. The landscape in these Wadis is amazing, very narrow, very tall gorges of striated rock. Sadly the first kilometer or so of the walk is past a lot of litter as the local populace are less than conscientious when picnicking.
However at this time of the year if there is a cloud in the sky then Wadi Walking is out. Simply because when you are wandering through a Wadi the stream at the base is gentle and ankle deep. You get some rain in the upper catchment and this turns into a flash flood and water goes from ankle deep to six meters deep in a minute or so - and 99% of the time there is nowhere for you to run to.
From Amman we head to the land of Pyramids - Egypt.
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