Typed up at: Legend Hotel in Delhi Posted from: Legend Hotel in Delhi
The
receptionist at our hotel in Madaba pointed us to an intersection where
the bus to Amman would go by. Some people at the intersection flagged
down the right bus for us. About one dinar and an hour later we got off
the bus at one of Amman’s 5 bus stations. We got a taxi to the Sydney
Hotel. My cell phone proved invaluable because I didn’t have good
directions and our cab driver called the hotel twice to figure out where
it was. Amman has lots of one way streets, streets with more than one
name, and not really any maps that lay it all out.
But we got
there, and were shown a nice room. It was cold, and only a space heater,
but we were used to that by now. We spent a fair amount of time just
wandering around nearby downtown. We got our snorkel pictures developed,
which served as a reminder of how diverse Jordan really is. We often had
lunch at Hashem Restaurant, which serves great fuul and humus. Amman is
a decent sized city, but nothing like Cairo. There is less traffic, less
noise, less trash, and less people. Simultaneously it seems like there’s
a sizable rich (or maybe middle class) component to the city. There are
lots of boutique stores, fancy restaurants, expensive coffee shops, etc.
The main
downtown sight is the Roman theater where concerts are still given (but
sadly not in the winter). It’s big and impressive, and a guide was upset
that we didn’t want his services. Still, I was starting to feel
over-travelled and getting a bit done with seeing more sights. So we
relaxed a bit, used the Internet, and wandered without any clear goal.
One night we
met up with Essam, a friend of a friend. He drove us all over Amman
which gave us a taste of what the neighborhoods are like, from the poor
(which didn’t look too terrible) to the rich (where the size and variety
of homes is really cool). We got to see just about every of Amman’s
major hills, and discovered that most of them have nice buildings on the
top, preventing us from admiring the views everywhere.
Our other
major activity was to visit Jerash. We took a
wait-until-its-full-before-it-leaves-bus to the town, where we got of to
see the biggest remains of a Roman city in the Middle East. Mostly it
was just a lot of columns and big pieces of rock. There were several
reconstructed theaters, arches, and some fallen apart churches as well
as falling apart temples. I felt done looking at old buildings so
couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for the place.
I did really
enjoy the show they put on in the hippodrome, though. We got to see 40
people dressed up as Roman legionnaires demonstrate various formations
and maneuvers. The narration was good, and I really did try to imagine
what it would look like to see a full legion of 5000 soldiers do the
same. There was your standard gladiator show, and then they rode horse
carts around the hippodrome which looked kind of neat, but did not feel
at all like a race. To get back we took a service taxi, a regular bus,
and finally a real taxi. It all went pretty smoothly.
