Amman & Jerash

We arrived in Amman, capitol of Jordan, at a reasonable time of the morning, having reached daylight waiting for our connecting flight in Dubai. The 3 hour flight from Dubai to Amman was incredible for the contrast between the deep blue of the Gulf of Oman and the yellow brown of the desert peninsula of Saudi Arabia. In fact, we saw no vegetation at all on the approach to Amman, other than a few green irrigation circles. Trees seriously struggle here, and while not really in the desert in this part of Jordan, the ground is very rocky and barren (seems to be all folded limestone), actually very much like the dry areas of south eastern Spain (which Kate visited in 2002). There are even many olive orchards, cypress and the same sort of gnarly pines.


Amman was a bit of a shock for us in that it was so different to any place we have ever travelled before and the differences were a little overwhelming on the first day. A lot of it is tiredness also, but it didn’t take too long to get the feel of the place, although we still find it tiring wandering the streets! The biggest challenge is the very frequent hassling by taxi drivers (particularly) and some shop owners just because you are foreigners. It’s interesting to see how much you are bugged compared to locals who are left pretty much totally alone. We have paid a bit more than the locals for the same services, even the local bus, but it’s not been too bad. There are many times where we could have paid much more if we hadn’t been firm and relatively on to it!

Our first day in Amman we spent the morning having a bit of a nap after our flight, then decided to head out for the afternoon to downtown Amman and The Citadel, a large complex of Roman ruins (built approximately during the 1st century, with a further Umayyad palace and Byzantine basilica from the 6th and 7th centuries) on top of Amman’s largest hill. We soon found that Amman is very hilly! It’s an amazing city of almost identical limestone and concrete block apartments all clambering on top of one another all over the hills. Would be very easy to get lost and confused in! We walked all the way from our accommodation into the downtown area, which was a real assault to the senses so we very much enjoyed the peace and quiet of wandering the Citadel complex in the late afternoon light. The complex has excellent views over the city so well worth it, even just for that! On our way back, we were getting a bit worried about food for dinner. It’s actually a bit hard to find restaurants – there are some stalls etc but rather hard to know what they’re selling and whether it’s ok to eat. We found this little place near the Citadel where this wonderfully friendly young guy made us a type of Jordanian BBQ. It’s a pita bread stuffed with meat, tomato, chillies, onions and spices, and thrown in a big oven – seriously yummy!

 The Temple of Hercules on The Citadel, Amman

 View over Amman from The Citadel

Yummy Jordanian food!

Today we visited the roman city of Jerash, about 50 km north of Amman. We took the local bus which was JD1 each, each way (about NZ$2), compared to taxis which are JD10-15 (NZ$20-30), although it took some convincing of the taxi drivers that we were going to take the bus! Jerash was amazing – much better than we had expected, though not sure what we did expect! We had a wonderful time exploring the ruins and it was surprisingly quiet. Tour groups seemed to come and go and certainly not as far into the city as we explored. The restoration work is really excellent and many of the buildings, roads and columns are being largely reconstructed from the rubble. They say that only about 10% of all the ruins have been excavated and that is certainly impressive. Highlights were the two roman theatres, the Temple of Zeus, Temple of Artemis and the beautiful paved and columned roads, where you can still see the grooves from the ancient chariot wheels. In its heyday, more than 15,000 people lived in the roman city.

 Walking down the Cardo Maximus

 The South Theatre

Temple of Artemis

All in all, we are glad that we are starting our trip here instead of Cairo as I think it gives us a more gentle start to a new culture and way of doing things. We are also really glad we had a couple of days here to try things ourselves and make our own way around, but it certainly is tiring and hard work so think the tour will give us a bit more time to relax in that respect.

We are just listening now to the most beautiful call to prayer we have ever heard. The beautiful blue King Abdullah Mosque is right across the road from our accommodation. We got woken up this morning at 4 am by his amazing singing – it brings a lump to your throat.

Haha, just met our tour leader, Scott, for the rest of our trip. Turns out he is from Christchurch, lived in Shirley, went to Banks Ave School and even had the same teachers as me!! Such a small world!