Thoughts On [insert religious topic(s) here]

After finishing the post last night at 5 PM, I took a nap. I woke from the nap at 6:30… AM!!!! I must have been exhausted because Jac’line said I slept like a rock. I was pretty refreshed but who wouldn’t be after 13.5 hours of sleep? It was shaping up to be a good day of rest. Ironically, it’s also Shabbat in Israel today.

We had some coffee in our room and went down to the lobby for breakfast. Breakfast is the wrong word to describe the meal we were served. It consisted of a single hard-boiled egg, two slices of pita and cheese. :-/ They skimp a bit on breakfasts here in Jordan.

Our room at Palace Hostel

The view from our balcony at the Palace Hostel in Amman, Jordan

At breakfast we met Greg, an English teacher from Wales who was taking a few months off to go travel the world. He told me about an offer that many airlines have where for a set amount of money, you can buy tickets to take you around the world in a set amount of time going either east or west. For example, Greg had left Sydney, Australia where he was teaching and flew to Los Angles, then London, then Amman. Sunday he was off to Bangkok, and then back to Sydney. He was able to do all this flying over the course of 5 months for about $2,000 USD. BUH!!!! This might just be the way to go. I’m definitely going to look into this for some travels in the future.

Greg and his friend Alex had sat with Jac’line last night while I was sleeping. They allayed a lot of the concerns that she had about Jordan, encouraging us to stick it out here for another night and then go to Petra on schedule.

Greg also told us about a restaurant about 15 minutes away by foot called Wild Jordan. He suggested we meet there for dinner at 7:30. He said that the restaurant has amazing food and great atmosphere. Anything is better than our hostel and being in the chaos of the city so that’s where dinner is going to be.

We headed out for the Citadel, a set of famous ruins located on a hill in the center of Amman. Biblically, this is the battle place where David sent Uriah to die. David had shacked up with Bathsheba and gotten her pregnant so he tried to cover up the crime by having Uriah spend a night with his wife. Uriah refused to since it was wartime and in response, David sent Uriah to the front lines of a battle with the Ammonites-hence the name of the city Amman-and Uriah was killed.

Somehow we took a back path to the Citadel that involved some very steep steps and walking through people’s backyards. The bonus of this was that we were able to get into the Citadel for free since we avoided all the ticket booths. The ruins at the site were impressive, especially the Hercules Arch constructed by the Romans.

Hercules Arches at the Citadel in Amman, Jordan

On the other side of the hill was a mosque built during the 8^th century CE. A geo-cache is located near the mosque so I got out the GPS and began searching. The major clue was to look for a structure that was a “sign of the ocean” and look around behind it. We saw pillars by the mosque that had seashells carved at the top and began looking around the one closest to the coordinates. We probably spent 30 minutes searching ever nook and cranny in the structure but couldn’t find the cache.

The Sign of the Ocean at the Citadel. There was a geocache here that eluded me. Drats!

I was impressed with how hard Jac’line helped me search for the cache. I think she is getting into this game so we’ll have to go searching in Petra and Jerusalem when we get back. She and I are even talking about leaving our own in Jerusalem.

*Pushes up glasses, snorts, and continues listening to “World of Warcraft” soundtrack*

We stopped by the Jordan Archaeological Museum at the Citadel because it touted itself as having some of the original Dead Sea Scrolls. After seeing the entire Book of Isaiah, I was skeptical but we went in. I was shocked to see the state that many of the exhibits were kept in. The scrolls they had were just kept in a glass case and the light and humidity had utterly destroyed them. They were curled up, and had a nasty green coat on them. There was no text on them to read which just really disappointed me.

Instead of intruding again in people’s backyards, Jac’line and I got a taxi down the hill and back into Amman. We were both still pretty tired from all the travelling in the last few days so we just walked by a Roman Amphitheatre situated in the middle of the city and made our way back to our hostel. We managed to get lost for about 30 minutes but got back safely.

Exhausted, we just sat in the lobby and drank coffee. There was a guy in the lobby from America who was an avid traveler having been to 182 countries. He liked to talk so we just let him and enjoyed hearing all the countries he had been to and hadn’t been to while we rested.

Back in our room, we double-checked on the car for tomorrow and rested before heading to Wild Jordan around 5:30. We figured we’d just sip coffee and look at the city then have dinner a bit later with Greg. The walk to Wild Jordan wasn’t too bad, just up a lot of stairs. When we got up there, the view really was spectacular. It looked out over the entire city and the entire dining area was on a balcony over the hill.

The sun sets over Amman (as seen from the Wild Jordan restuarant and cafe)

Coincidentally we ran into Greg at the restaurant having some coffee so we sat and chatted for a bit with him. They also had free wifi. We talked to Greg and decided to have dinner early without him because he wasn’t going to be eating till much later. So, we sat on the balcony and had a wonderful meal. I had a chicken wrap with salsa and Jac’line had lemon-pepper chicken with mashed potatoes; A nice filling meal for two weary travelers.

We stayed at Wild Jordan for a good three hours using wifi, drinking coffee and relaxing. As we were leaving, Greg walked in with another guy from the hostel, Dave. Dave had heard that we were renting a car and was wandering if we could give him a ride to Petra. We told him that we were also going to be hopping around to some biblical sites but he didn’t mind. So, we have a passenger for tomorrow. It’ll be a new experience for Jac’line and I.

On a completely unrelated note, it’s weird to be removed from world news for so long. Back in America it seems that the news is always right in front of you (more bad than good, sadly) but due to the language barrier, there is little news for us to read.

I’m thinking about this only because when we got back to the hostel, there were 5 people in the lobby just watching footage of the Pakistani suicide bombing on TV. I realized that I have no clue what is going on in the US, much less in the world. Jac’line and I talked about that when we got back to the room and decided to try and stay more abreast of the news just for our own sake, but also to not let it affect our trip in any way. We just don’t want to be completely blind-sided when we get home.

Still tired, we went to bed. Hopefully our energy will return for Petra in two day.

Shalom,

Mat