Every time we head out on an one of our trips out of the country, one of the first questions is "How/why did you pick that country?" Jordan landed on the bucket list about 5 years ago. Ultimately, we can thank Zuckerberg's AI for this trip. At some point, a Facebook travel page, (in fact I think it was BucketList Travel) had a post that came up in Aimee's feed, which she tagged me in around visiting Petra in Jordan. I was familiar with the ancient city, but had never really thought about visiting until that point. We talked about it a few times as a someday. We had some time to ourselves coming this year, and we thought about it a bit more seriously.
Looking more into the country I learned that much of the history of the country is Bedouin in culture. Thinking back to my Oman visit in 2008, one of the elements that placed that country at the top of my list was the deep culture of welcoming hospitality that seems to be the fabric of the Bedouin society, of which Oman is primarily comprised. This was a huge plus to me. Aimee has never been to the middle east, but I thought that she would also really enjoy interacting with the local people.
Of course, safety is also important to me, and ease of travel. Jordan sits at an interesting spot between Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, and Israel. This is definitely a "neighborhood" that has seen far more than its fair share of war and tension. Jordan however, even after opening the country to millions of refugees from the surrounding areas has been able to maintain a stable, modern, and tolerant country. As with many of the countries in the middle east, English is widely spoken alongside Arabic, making it fairly easy to get by on ones own. (I have brushed up on my very basic essential Arabic I picked up 14 years ago, though Jordan has a different dialect than Oman and the UAE).
So in typical Ryan form, I spent the last several months developing an itinerary covering every activity and every meal of every day. Some of the activities are preplanned and certainties, much of it however is the fallback if nothing else grabs our attention. (This prevents wasting a couple hours a day of "what do we want to do today" that can often happen on a trip). As the day neared, unfortunately, the weather, specifically for our two days in Amman, looked worse and worse.
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| Check out those Friday Windspeeds |
Highs in the low 40s (yes, that's Fahrenheit, not Celsius), rain, and 25mph+ winds. This was the day where we intended to spend half of it checking out the ancient 3200 year old Amman Citadel in the middle of the city. This was the center of many ruling groups over the millenia including the neo-assyrians, neo-babylonians, Romans (around Jesus time) as well as a handful of other groups. Though we've packed for the cold and wet weather, we still may need to find alternate plans for our time in the capital city.
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| Enjoying a brief 55 minutes in First Class |
Fortunately, our travel was fairly uneventful. My American Airlines status got us upgraded on our one hour initial flight to Chicago, but we had to enjoy the economy experience for the long flight from Chicago to Jordan on Royal Jordanian airlines. All in all, the travel time was 13 hours in the air with a 7 hour layover in Chicago (somewhat by design when I booked incase there were any issues getting into O'Hare). Just under a 24 hour trip in each direction.
This was my first flight on Royal Jordanian, and I have to say it is not my favorite. The plane was a Boing 787, and the seats were tremendously close together, especially for a 12 hour flight. Aimee and I were in the center section which was comprised of three seats. Aimee was in the middle, between myself, and a gentleman perhaps a few years younger than us from Raleigh, whom I believe was a Palestinian American. He was on his way to Jerusalem to meet up with his wife whom had flown over a couple weeks ago to be with her family. Whether he liked it or not, he was about to be our new best friend, since the 3 of us had about 3 square feet to share for the next 12 hours. We actually had great conversation about kids, COVID, and everything else.
Upon arrival we grabbed our bags, our rental car, and made the drive into the city of Amman. Driving on the highway from the airport to the outskirts of the city, was not too dissimilar from driving in the US, although we did see the occasional pair of camels or herd of sheep along the side of the road. Before we got to the city, we did run across a site which I found pretty fascinating:
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| Ikea, Amman |
Yes: even in Jordan, you can get yourself Swedish mass produced furniture, with the iconic illustrated instructions Once we got into the more urban area however, the streets meandered in every direction, up and down hills, and lane markings meant less and less to other drivers. Right as we entered the city, we stopped to get Petrol (gas). Gas stations are full service here (as they have been in my past ventures in the middle east. ) The petrol attendant filled up the tank, and looked in and saw Aimee, and while he knew no English, he gestured with his hands and face to ask why she was not smiling. She tried to explain she was tired from the flight, but smiled nonetheless---a gesture he returned and bid us on our way a salaam aleykum.
We found the hotel after circling the block a couple times, and asking a gentleman on the side of the road if he knew where it was. He pointed directly on the other side of the car, and said "It's right there". Yep, we were sitting right in front of it. We checked, in and it was as advertised. Basically a one bedroom, fully furnished apartment, with a beautiful view of Amman.
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| Sunset from our Bedroom |
After freshening up, we decided to explore the area around our hotel. We were close to al Rainbow Street, which is known for its cafes, restaurants and shops. The weather was a bit better than expected. The sun had come out and was setting, it was in the 50s, and not too windy yet. Rainbow street was lined with small shops, coffee shops, and restaurants, but our first mission was to find a local hair dryer for Aimee (I once was given the advice to never try using an American hair dryer in another country. I haven't tested that, but thought instead of blowing up a hairdryer, and possibly blowing a fuse, we'd find an inexpensive one in town to buy. ) We walked about half a mile to Basman Street where we had done some research and saw there were lots of local shops selling everything imaginable. Amman is an extremely hilly city, and the walk to Basman street was all down hill, with a couple places where we had to walk down incredibly long staircases to get from one street to the next.
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| One of several stairways between al-Rainbow Street and Basman Street |
On this little trek, Aimee was ecstatic to find that Amman is filled with stray cats everywhere, and lamented the fact that she couldn't take them all home and rescue them.
Once we arrived in the shopping area, we ended up wandering for quite awhile, as there were hundreds of storefronts. Everytime we got to an intersection there were more in each direction, The streets were packed with people. We stopped by a street vendor that had various fruit smoothies and juices. Aimee got something with a variety of fruits, and I got a fresh pomegranate juice. We walked past another tiny shop (about 12 foot by 12 foot, which was typical of most of the shops). It had a variety of beauty supplies, so we stopped in and talked to the owner, who had 2 options for hair dryers. We talked to him for quite awhile, and he asked us how his English was. He said he tries to use it as much as he can, as its such a universal language, and he can use it in any other country. Even other Arabic countries, he is able to communicate better (likely because of the different dialects of Arabic) through using English.
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| Near K. Faysal Sq. and K. Hussein Street |
Ultimately we bought the hair dryer, and moved on. Landing in a spice/nut/coffee/and candy shop with a funny and friendly shop owner that gave us lots of free samples and we were able to buy some coffee beans and dates.
The evening ended back on Rainbow Street where we went to Nabteh o Fatteh for dinner. This restaurant and sheesha (aka hookah) bar had many middle eastern dishes, teas, and specialty fruit (non-alcoholic) drinks. I attempted to order one of their fruit "mocktails" but there was some confusion, and the waiter thought I wanted matteh tea. He warned me that the drink was very strong, and if I wanted I could try a taste. I thought this strange, since the description of what I thought I was ordering was pretty basic with several types of fruit in it. I later realized he thought I was pointing to something else on the menu. The matteh provided for an interesting experience however. This tea which originated in Argentina is actually quite popular in Syria. Its served in a small vessel full of the tea leaves/spices, hot water is poured into the vessle, and then it is sipped through a metal straw which draws the water through the tea and strains it.
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| Sipping some Matteh |
While I don't normally order tea in restaurants, but this was a fascinating experience. After an enjoyable dinner, we walked the block back to our hotel.
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