As if week number one wasn’t amazing enough, week number two was even better because it included one of our best experiences since the journey began. That experience will get its own journal entry that is linked a little later in this entry. Sunday morning’s sleep was interrupted by the fire alarm going off in the building a little before 2am, but it was a false alarm. Once we woke up for the day, I watched the FSU/Alabama football game. I went into the game with rather low expectations after last season and was very pleased that FSU dominated the game and won comfortably. Very nice surprise. We walked over to the Boulevard and had a delicious brunch at Base Coffee – I had Eggs Benedict and Sandy had scrambled eggs, avocado, and toast and we shared an order of pancakes. We toured the Abdali Mall and grabbed some groceries at C-Town and then worked on the blog and upcoming lodging back at the apartment. For dinner, we walked to Rustic Bar and enjoyed our first Jordanian beer – we tried a couple of different kinds of Carakale and ended up sharing a pitcher of the Kolsch-style beer. We had burgers and fries with our beers and then headed home to finish watching Lawrence of Arabia.
Monday was office day for the month and then we made spaghetti for dinner. After dinner, we picked up our rental car for a couple of day trips coming up and then drove to Sport City to meet the Jordan Pickleball Club. We met Morad, Tariq, Nassim, and Ayda who were all very welcoming. I played while Sandy watched and chatted with Ayda and before we left Ayda invited us to dinner with her family before we leave Jordan. It was great to get to play pickleball in another country on the journey and I wish I had gotten a group picture.
Tuesday was a day trip a little northwest of Amman – about an hour’s drive. The city we visited is called Salt and while it has just as much history as any other area we have been, I felt like the places we visited gave more insight into the Ottoman Empire that ended with the Arab Revolt around 1920. The museum is housed in a mansion that was home to one of the wealthier families in Salt during the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s. As we walked around town, this was the only time a Jordanian wasn’t very welcoming to us. There was a small group of schoolchildren who wanted to chat with us while we were walking up to a lookout and a girl about 10 years old was emphatic that we needed to speak Arabic to her even though she spoke English. The kids are all taught English in school and do quite well with it. Anyway, she wasn’t happy that we wouldn’t speak Arabic. We predict she is going to be a handful as a teenager. It made us laugh. After Salt, we stopped outside of town for lunch at a beautiful property called Bait Shaker. I had a pizza and Sandy had a veggie omelet. We also had some hummus, halloumi cheese, and pomegranate juices. We couldn’t eat it all, but we wanted to try some of the different dishes. The halloumi cheese was fun because it reminded us of squeaky cheese curds in Wisconsin. Back home in Amman, we watched the movie called Theeb – filmed in Jordan and released in 2014 and then wound down with Destination X and Frasier.
Wednesday was another day trip, this time heading north to Jerash. This city is known to house some of the best-preserved Roman ruins in the world. Some people compare it to Pompeii in Italy. Walking around Jerash gives a similar feeling to walking around Pompeii. Pompeii is more preserved, but you can definitely get a feel for how the city was laid out 1,900 years ago and feel like what it was like when you would walk down the main street lined with shops. Hadrian’s Arch welcomes you into the old city – it was built in 129 and 130 to celebrate the visit of Emperor Hadrian to Jerash.
The hippodrome where the chariot races took place is still in decent shape and the two theaters are in very good shape.
The main road shows where the chariots created ruts in the stone.
It was a fascinating day of exploration around the old ruins of Jerash. All four of our day trips have been amazing, but this one edges out the others just slightly as our favorite. After the ruins, we walked to Um Khalil for a Lebanese lunch. We ordered two beef shawarmas and didn’t realize how much food was going to come. We shared one of them and took the other one to have as leftovers later in the week. Back in Amman, we returned the rental car – it is so nice having the rental car office only ten minutes away walking. We watched some America’s Got Talent and Frasier and then went to bed.
For a recap of Thursday’s amazing experience, check out the blog entry from earlier today, linked here.
And now we have come to our last day in Amman before we head south. We got up and headed over to Costa Coffee for Sandy’s Starbucks time. After spending a few hours there, we went home and enjoyed our leftovers from Um Khalil that we brought home on Wednesday – they were just as good as leftovers as they were fresh from the kitchen. We went down to the gym to get our workouts in and then went over to Thrifty/Dollar to get our rental car that is taking us south. It’s the same car we had last week for our day trips. It’s a Kia Pegas and we have named it Peggy. We parked Peggy in the apartment building garage and then went to Buffalo Wings n Rings for Friday night beers and I of course had wings and Sandy had a chicken quesadilla and onion rings. The beer was again the Almaza beer from Lebanon. Rawed is the manager there and he was always very welcoming when we were there or when we walked by and he bought each of us a beer on our last night here. We picked up a few pieces of chocolate at Bousheyeh Chocolate next to our apartment building and headed home. We have really enjoyed our time here in Amman and even though we are excited to explore new areas of Jordan, we will miss Amman because it has been so hospitable and it has exceeded any expectations we had.