Yes, yes, there wasn’t really a Day One. Day One, such as it was, was spent in a series of buses, airports, airplanes, and taxis to get us to Amman. Not a lot to report there except that a bus from Seattle to Vancouver seems interminable, and the British Airways Club World lounge in Vancouver is very nice indeed. Right, on to day two, wherein Anna and I wake up in Amman, proceed to do a whole lot of walking, and decide to brave renting a car. Note: I’m posting this to Tangenty.com, and it will flow through to Facebook. If you’re reading on Facebook and not getting the pretty pictures, you’ll want to hit my blog directly.
So our flight arrived in Amman right around midnight, and by the time we dealt with visas and immigration, grabbed a taxi, and made it to the city, it was about 1am. By the time our driver found our apparently off-the-beaten-path hotel, it was about 1:30am. We may have been asleep by 2:00am.
So you know the very cool sounding Adhan, which calls Muslims to prayer? Which is performed just before sunrise? Over loudspeakers? Well, sunrise today was at 5:45am. I managed to sleep through it, I think, but Anna didn’t, and we were both wide awake by 6:30 or so. We lounged a bit, and I messed with all of the geek stuff I brought, and we were at breakfast by 7:30 and out walking around 8:00.
We knew we wanted to hit The Citidel, and the original plan was to take a taxi to it. But once we started walking, we kind of just kept going. It ended up being a nice walk of maybe five miles, which we did in about three hours. We learned a bunch of stuff. Like, Amman is not really a walking city. There are districts with sidewalks, but going across the city means constantly walking in the road and crossing the street to where the putativ sidewalk looks better. Also, it turns out that crossing the street is basically an exercise in bravery or hope: you kind of just walk across, through moving traffic, and hope for the best. It takes some getting used to.
The other odd thing we discovered while wending our way to the Citidel was that the sidewalks, such as they were, were totally devoid of pedestrians. Maybe because it was so hot and there was no reasonable way to actually, you know, walk.
Anyways, we survived the walk and the traffic and made it to the Citidel before noon. The Citadel, as it turns out, has been undergoing pretty serious renovation since 1997. The ruins are in an interesting stage of reapir, with very old pieces sitting on top of, or under, newer concrete forms designed to keep the place more or less intact and to give an idea of what it once looked like. The first thing you see upon climbing the hill, and the first picture you should see here, is the ruin of a Roman temple to Hercules. It’s impressive as hell, and I don’t blame them for substituting in modern replicas for parts of the columns (note the different color/texture on the rightmost column).
The Citadel buildings themselves are pretty amazing, too. Very big, very old, very stone. They’ve got that “I can’t believe people lived right here, in these buildings, 1500 years ago” feeling. Oddly, the whole park was really deserted when we were there. It seems like a place that merits a lot of tourist attention, but at times we were genuinely, truly alone in a large section.
The museum at the Citadel was a bit odd — it was more of a general purpose “archaelogy of the middle east” display than anything specific to the Citadel itself. However, one pleasant surprise: the museum houses some fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
After making our way back down from the hilltop where the Citadel sits, we looked briefly at the Roman Amphitheatre. By that time, Anna’s feet were suffering from her shoes, so we took a taxi to the Sheraton, got directions to a car rental place, and ended up renting a minivan for our drive to Petra and Aqaba tomorrow, and then our return to Madaba on Thursday and the Amman airport on Friday.
In driving the minivan back to our hotel, I found that Amman traffic isn’t as intimidating as it appears. Like other big cities with seemingly crazed traffic, people are generally paying a lot of attention to what’s going on, and by doing the same I made it the couple of miles back with a minimum of being honked at (the use of horns in Amman is frequent and rarely in anger; it’s more of an “I’m here” or “hey, that was close, nice work!”).
After changing shoes, we headed back out, ostensibly to see the King Abdullah mosque. It was about halfway back to the Citadel, so call it another two miles or so of walking. When we got there — and yes, it’s very pretty — we were kind of stumped. Do you just walk in? Or do you ask the guy at the top of the stairs? Oh, wait, he’s got a prayer mat and is facing Mecca.
We stood on the sidewalk indecisively and in a general state of intimidation (it’s a big, intimidating piece of architecture, after all) until a kind gentleman handed us a brochure. Which, we discovered, concerned the construction and history of the mosque, but nothing practical like how we were supposed to tour if, if we were permitted to at all. We stood around looking stupid and lost a bit more until the same gentleman took mercy on us and informed us that we could indeed tour the mosuqe… tomorrow.
So we gave up, walked to the Hyatt, and had some drinks. Yes, minus points for going all western, but it was the end of a long day, and we were feeling maybe a bit defeated by the mosque experience.
So it was back to the hotel, and it’ll be an early night. Tomorrow we’ll drive to Petra and then Aqaba, where we’ll spend the night.