Monday 11 Feb. expected top temp 8 overcast and showers.
Buffet dinner again last night and this was pretty ordinary. Fortunately after we checked in we had a club sandwich and fries.
Our last day and another day in the bus. We have a 2 hour drive to Umm Qais an Ancient Greco Roman city. As we drive out of the city we reach a point where we 10 kms from the Syrian border, we turn off the highway and head for Umm Qais. On the way we pass a store with the tiger emblem on the front, Ann thinks this is a good sign. Further on we stop at a bread shop and Nidal gets some warm fresh bread and some falafels for us, very tasty. We walk around Umm Qais which has many old buildings and an amphitheatre. We then are taken to a view point where we can see the Golan Heights, Palestine and Israel, just across the Jordan valley, and Syria and then down to lake Tiberius.
We then move on to Ajloun Castle, an Islamic castle built in the 12th century to protect the region from the crusaders. It is another 2 hour drive. On the way we pass through Irbid a large city that is very busy. Our driver tries to take a short cut by taking small narrow side streets but is thwarted by parked cars which prevent him from turning the bus onto the Main Street, so he has to backtrack which includes reversing up streets until he can find a way out.
On the way we have a forced detour, some cables have fallen across the road and the police are diverting traffic. We arrive at 1.15 and it is high on a mountain overlooking the surrounding valleys. It is better preserved than the others we have looked at. There are great views all around and must have looked invincible to any invaders, it is one of Saladin’s three main castles. We head back down at 2pm as we are off to Jerash one of the best preserved and prettiest Greco Roman city.
We get to Jerash at 2.45 and leave at 4.45. It is an incredible place only discovered in 1925. It was initially commenced by the Greeks, but the Romans took over and finished it. It covers a vast area and there are the remains of shops, temples, churches, public baths, mosques and houses. There is an 800 metre roadway running north to south and everything runs off that. There are two theatres and just outside the city walls a hippodrome. Colonnades run down both sides of the street and surround the temple, there is large oval area of colonnades and you are directed to a temple for Zeus. We are all tired and have an hours drive back to the hotel.
Our farewell dinner tonight is at a restaurant and Nidal tells us it will be a 1 hour drive to get there on the other side of Amman. It is going to be a long day! We get back to the hotel at 5.45 and we get 30 mins to change and get back on the bus! We arrive at the restaurant at 7.15. The food was good, it was not a buffet! We eventually get back to hotel at 9.15. Tomorrow we check out at 1pm.
Jordan has been a very safe country, they love their royal family and see themselves as Jordanians first and foremost, religion comes second. There are friendly and hospitable. Nidal told us a lot of stories about the late King Hussein and his son King Abudulla 11. You take it with a grain of salt as it is hard to imagine the whole country feels this way, but after reading about King Abudalla I on Wikipedia I was impressed. The houses all look drab on the outside and are either limestone or sandstone or concrete blocks. They are either white, cream, grey or lighter or darker versions of those colours. I am sure they are well furnished inside. There is a lot of litter on sides of roads once you get out of the city, nothing like Egypt, but enough to make you think they don’t care much about the exterior, it is all about what counts inside and I think this also reflects their personality.
It has been an extraordinary tour considering the places we have visited, but a tiring one. Don’t think we will be doing a travelling bus tour again. Looking forward to getting home.
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