After a yummy breakfast we packed our bags again (by tonight we have slept in 5 different hotels in 5 nights) and drove around Amman for a couple of hours. I love the pita bread and we're getting lots of it, and also the dried fruits, stone fruits and hummus and olives and all sorts of cheeses, but this morning there were hash browns that I couldn't resist.
Amman looks homogenous with no skyscrapers and sandy coloured concrete buildings and only a sprinkling of trees that have adapted to survive the arid region. But as we drove around we saw leafy green streets with mansions adorned in marble, stoned narrow winding roads with so much character, we saw shopping malls and banks, ancient ruins and a really arty creative area with trendy cafes and art galleries. It's so different to Sydney where the old and new are right next to each other, and the "old" means thousands of centuries ago, not just two like Sydney.
We went to Rainbow St and to King Faisal St which has such creative umbrella art installation over the stairs leading to cool cafes. Even the graffiti was art, and the pot plants - it was so vibrant.
Amman was like a ghost town but only because it was Friday, the day of worship and especially because it was Ramadan. We went to the highest point of Amman, the Citadel. This has been inhabited since neolithic ages, the Bronze Age, Iron Age, the Romans, Persians, Abbasids, Umayyads, Mumluk period (1250-1516) and the Ottoman period (1616-1917). The timeline at the Citadel helped me with these (and I don't know what ALL the different periods are, but I know there were many that claimed after war.
The Roman temple of Hercules was built during Marcus Aurelius's reign 161-180AD, which I explored. It's my first Roman ruin and I got a bit of an art lesson from Mum about the podium, columns and the agora nearby.
We left Amman and were given a bag of bananas and oranges for lunch. Because it's Ramadan and we won't be in any touristy areas today there won't be anywhere to buy food or drink. And the driver was right, we didn't see a single tourist at any of our stops, but that could also be because tourism is down 73% this year.
Jordan's location means it has "troublesome" neighbours with Hezbollah, Syria and Iraq on its borders. Iraq and Syria used to be the major trading partners and a lot of their DGP came from exports to these neighbours. But all exports and imports has stopped now because Jordan isn't an ally of theirs and this has really hurt the economy.
There's 14% unemployment and a quarter of the 6.4million Jordanian population are Syrian refugees living in camps in the north. That's 2 million Syrian refugees, waiting to go back home when their civil war ends. Jordan is getting a lot of aid to help support the refugees but it is also backed by the United States who wants to have a friend in a recalcitrant region.
We drove to Madaba (about an hour) to a Greek Orthodox Church. Madaba has most of Jordan's Christians, which aren't a lot as 93% of Jordanians are Sunni Muslims. We went to St Georges Church because a mosaic map of the Holy Land was found when they were repairing the church in 1887. The map was made in 527AD. I had another lesson on Byzantine art!
It was lucky we had our bananas and oranges and water (and the apricots, figs and dates Mum scavenged from breakfast) because you can see in the photo above of the street outside the church - nothing was open.
We then drove through more desert to Mt Nebo, but we stopped in a random place for almost an hour so our driver could pray at a mosque on the highway.
We climbed up Mt Nebo where Moses had led the Israelites from Egypt and when God told him to look in the distance to the Promised Land which is for the Israelites.
In Deuteronomy 43:1-6 it says:
"Then Moses climbed Mout Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jerricho. There the Lord showed him the whole land .. Then the Lord said to him, "This is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said, 'I will give it to your descendants.' I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over it."
man looks Moses was 120 years old and he died there. He never got to the Promised Land. Mum has climbed Mt Sinai in Egypt where Moses was said to be given the Ten Commandments by God. So Moses made it to Jordan and Egypt but not Israel, as the countries are known today.
It's a pilgrimate site and Pope John Paul II went there in 2000.
man looks The Promised Land is ahead of me in this photo. Jericho, Bethlehem, Jerusalem etc. This is what Moses would have seen because the environment wouldn't have changed a lot.
Then we drove for 3 hours without stopping (this was longer than the flight from Istanbul to Amman) on the Desert Highway through more desert!
And here's a short video of when we were waiting for our driver to pray at the mosque. It was surreal. The melodious chanting of the meuzzin was echoing through the vastness from microphones on the mosque's minarets.
At 5pm the road down to Petra wasn't the high speed straight flat Desert Highway, it took 45 minutes to wind our way down to the town of Petra. We got to our hotel in time to put our bags in the room and charge our phones (cameras) which were down to 6% battery, and then walk to Petra Kitchen.
man looks This is where we learned to cook typical Jordanian food, and all the ingredients except some of the spices came from Jordan. Petra used to be a caravan stop on the spice trade from India.
The chef showed us how to cut all sorts of vegetables and garlic the right way, how to recognise all the different spices to scoop up to add to the Shourbat Adas (lentil soup), Baba Ganuj, Galayat Bandura, Tahini salad, Fattoush and Kabsat Dajaj! It took us 2 hours to cut and cook, but then we sat down to eat it. It was great, Mum and I both liked the Shourbat Adas best and we now have the receipe so we will give it a try in Sydney. I think I can do it, I'm not sure about Mum!
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