Roman Stuff

Todays post is brought to you by Jonathius VI, Governor of Jerash. Its been a plethora of collumnii. We took taxis to Jerash this morning, apparently the second largest Roman site after Ephesus in Turkey. It was slightly marred by some large Italian coach parties but once you found a bit to yourselves quite atmospheric. I had to place a self imposed ban on more pics of rows of columns after a while but they were quite impressive. Again, quite easy to conjur up carriages trundling along and performances in the theatre.

We then went to Amman citadel, crowned by more ruins and a museum containing a couple of the dead sea scrolls. As well as the days mind meltdown - brain couldnt compute with these statues being 9000 years old.


Retracing steps back to Petra, we made a stop at a crusader fort yesterday and then a crazy time at the dead sea - floating in 90% salty sea water at the lowest point on Earth having another mind meltdown at being able to see Jericho over the other side and being withing 20k of Bethlehem and Jerusalem and having passed through Sodom and Gomorrah and been up Mount Nebo where Moses apparently saw the promised land and is buried. Random Bible places all over here. Still in need of some unbiased info getting to the bottom of what really went on round here that influenced our civilization so much. Google Research tends to bring up stuff along the lines of 'Shocked by the Bible! The most astonishing facts you've never been told'.



Tomorrow its a new country - we cross over into Syria and spend the night in Damascus

Petra

The Big One - truly amazing, I actually think that in over 20 years of travelling, this could possibly rate as the single most amazing sight I have ever seen. Or to be more precise, group of sights. And maybe that is the key to Petra, it is in fact so much more that the Treasury - that edifice cut out of bare rock that reveals itself to you at the end of a narrow canyon. The Treasury is what you come for and doesn't dissapoint, but what takes you breath away is that fact that the whole site just keeps unfolding and revealing more and more as you walk deeper in. The Royal Tombs, The Street of facades, a colonnaded Roman street, a mosaic floored church, a hilltop monastary. You can really imagine the hustle and bustle of the city in the 1st to 5th Centurys when it was at its peak as a trading centre, you can almost hear carriages on cobblestones. I kept thinking of barter town in mad max as well as Indiana Jones of course. We spent 2 days in the area, enough to wander at leisure. We often had bits of it to ourself. Nat in fact had a total Lara Croft morning and left before breakfast to tackle the monastary. She was first in the park and first to the monastary - even beating the local bedouin shopkeepers and some disgruntled Germans, thats my girl!. In a moment of enlightenment we decided if we were in charge we would introduce an Oyster style animal card which you could by and exchange for use on any of the forms of transport in there which got very confusing as to which sections they travelled and how much it cost. There were camels, donkeys, horses and carriages. I reckon I would turn one of the caves into a Star Wars cantina complete with music and Jim Henson characters too. Yet another movie set you couldnt help thinking of. It was very Tatooiney down there.

Outside of the historical site, we managed Hammams and got scrubbed till several layers of dirty skin came off and also ducked into the 5 star Movenpick for huge ice creams in luxury settings. There was also the cave bar, a novel re-use of a former rock cut tomb which served a nice bloody mary.

Heres the pics - this will be a test of your fandom as theres about 130 and I couldnt bring myself to whittle down further.. Enjoy!

Wadi Rum

Jordan is Awesome! love it - such a refreshing change from Egpyt, people are actualy civil too you, and very smiley. Things have stepped into overdrive sights wise too, We have been at Petra for two days which is almost beyond words to describe, but I shall attempt to do so in a later post once I've sorted out my photos for it - of which there are many and Im in the process of some major editing. I have completed the set for Wadi Rum though. Not that they really do it justice. Was great fun four wheel driving through the desert with huge mountainous outcrops all around, checking out canyons with rock paintings, having Sage Tea in tents and finaly sleeping under the stars in a bedouin camp owned by a sheikh. This turned out quite a good bonding experience for our oddball disperate group with late night stupidity and silliness - we never expected to turn out to be the party group. This was the best night sleep temperature wise too.