Palace Hotel Amman

Tuesday, March 3 Up extra early and breakfast. We had made arrangements to take the resort bus to the border and asked for a lunch. We were ready to leave at 8, now I know we are getting old, the bus doesn't leave until 9:15 so we went and sat in the sun by the pool, said good-bye to the staff, got our big bag lunch from the front desk and were off at 9:15. We had also packed some sandwiches and took the 3 oranges we had accumulated over the last few days. We had one passenger who works at th...

Jordan - It is a very beautiful country and more rugged than we had expected. It is a very small country with only about 5 million people. The people have been very friendly and helpful as we have worked our way from the south to the north. Unlike Epgyt, there have been few people who hassled us, and if someone asked us to buy something and we said no, they kindly left us alone and simply said "Welcome to Jordan". What we did not anticipate was how expensive everything would be in Jordan and ...

The city of Amman was previously named Philadelphia... (obviously we couldn't think of a good title for this entry) This is our last day in Amman, we will be leaving very early tomorrow morning to fly to Istanbul, so we thought we should caught up on the blog... There is not actually much to see in Amman, it's a relatively new city and fairly modern, but there are a few good day trips to do from here. Also they apparently have the tallest freestanding flag pole in the world. The afternoon we ...

The immigration process here is fairly simple. You just stand in line and pay 10JAD ($15) for a VISA. We were on our way to claim luggage in no time.
The people here are amazing. Everyone says "welcome." The children stare a little, but they are beautiful people.
On the drive from the airport Chuck noticed signs leading to the Iraqi border. Hmmmmm. No worries, we didn't go that far. We checked into the hotel and went for a walk. We stopped at a juice stand and I noticed a man signing t...

Downtown, visiting Jerash and the Desert Castles too

We did the nice thing and picked up Stevo at the airport. He’d already made mates with the immigration dudes... apparently they aren’t much better than the land crossings. We all advise getting Visa’s before you come :-)

We did quite a lot in the week Steve was around, so stay with us here :-)

Spent the first night trying some local food and smoking a nargile and a walk through the Souqs. Finally we could see what the Damascus fuss was all about. As we’d ...

After getting on the bus in Damascus we pulled into another garage to pick up more passengers and I saw three very uniquely dressed men standing and waiting. They had on old school suits made of navy corduroy. The pants had many strange pockets and huge bell-bottoms. Their vests were tied with coarse leather straps. They had a sort of bundle wrapped up and hanging on their shoulders and each held a twisted walking stick. They came on the bus and one of them informed me that they were traditio...

Despres d'un parell de dies una mica estressants, avui al migdia he sortit finalment cap a Amman. Ha estat un dia de transit sense gaires coses per explicar. El viatge ha anat forca be i el servei a bord forca correcte . Porto un parell d'hores a Amman i em sembla una ciutat bastant occidental. La gent es molt amable i acollidora, amb un tracte hospitalari cap al turista, no t'agobien gaire pel carrer pero si els tens al costat en seguida es posen a parlar amb tu. Tal i com diu la guia, la ci...

Com que la guia Lonely Planet deia que els tours que organitzava l'hotel estaven tirats de preu, he decidit apuntar-me'n a un que visita unes quantes coses al voltant d'Amman: uns mosaics a Madaba on un pot jugar a fer d'Indiana Jones, el Mt. Nebo des d'on Moises va veure la Terra Promesa (i li va agafar un col.lapse fatal, perque despres de 40 anys recorrent el desert i menjant pa amarg, es deuria sentir una mica decepcionat de tant que havia sentir a parlar de Galilea), el riu Jorda (el Bes...

So believe it or not it was raining when we crossed the border from Syria into Jordan so we decided to splash (!) out on a taxi with our friends Donna and Monica to smooth the trip - quicker and easier we thought. Unfortunately we hadn't accounted for the fact that our taxi driver might be smuggling thousands of cigarettes under the cover of driving a few tourists. A few bribes saw us unhindered through customs at the border but the police 10 minutes up the road seemingly weren't so pliable. ...