Jerash to Petra

10/28/2008

Woke up and opted for sleep rather than breakfast and just made coffee in the room. Noticed during showers that the Sheraton had the same 'no-fog' mirror that the Tokyo Bay Hilton had that was immmortalized in that ever popular, atrsy photo Defogger. So had to get a picture for the collection.

We headed down to the lobby to meet Nahzee and our guide. I suddenly realized I'd left something in my bags and had to go rooting about in them while they were all neatly tagged and stacked near the concierge desk in the lobby. Oops. Our guide, Awni, found us and came over to introduce himself, so we sat chatting with him unti Nahzee (who'd gotten caught in traffic) arrived.

After greetings all around we packed up our gear in the car. This time I'd compressed it to a few bags since it didn't have to be weighed at the airport. It fit much better in the trunk. Away we went to Jerash.

It's a bit north of Amman (~50KM) and Awni and Nahzi pointed out a few sights along the way. Saw the tallest freestanding flagpole in the world, a dam, a resevoir, the refuge camps etc. They have much hillier terrain, so there was a lot of hill climbing with great views into the valleys.

The roads are line with pomegrante sellers with stacks of crates of fruit on the shoulders. we got to Jerash about 30-40 minutes later.

Jerash has several giftshops etc . at the entrance, but in a much nicer set up than those we'd seen in Egypt. This one was even covered. Then the gauntlet of ticky-tacky and back into daylight. You start at Hadrian's Arch and for a while that's what you focus on.

As you go on, you start to realize how really big the ruins are and how much ground they cover. They still hold a few chariot races for show in the hippodrome arena. There was a bagpipe band playing in the amphitheatre to show the accoustics.

Temple of Atremis was huge and had collumns so well balanced you could pop a metal spoon in a crack, push on the column, and watch the spoon wiggle even though the column didn't appear to be moving. There was a coffee "Stand" here as well. A guy making and selling traditional style Arabic coffee over big metal pots, He also sold water and sodas.