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Published: September 12th 2009
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View from my hotel room.After about 24 hours of traveling I finally made it into Jordan. The worst part of the flight was the nine hour lay over in Frankfurt waiting for the flight into Amman. Getting through the visa and customs stuff was much easier then I thought it would be and was stamped and on my way in less than ten minutes.
My ride was waiting for me outside of customs and we quickly set a speed record to my hotel near the 3rd Circle. I didn't get checked in until about 3:15 AM so decided to hit the streets to see what was going on. All of the Jordan travel guides rave about a Schwarma stand on 2nd circle which is a short walk so I decided to head out to that. I forgot to bring my book along and had forgotten the name, but saw a place that was packed full of people so thought that must be the place. Turns out it wasn't, Rheem which makes the killer Schwarma, but wound up getting a chicken/flatbread pizza sort of thing. They cooked it like a pizza in a brick fired oven and then folded it into more of a sandwich.
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The Husseini Mosque and the surrounding area is the hub for the Souk's. It was really good and seemed like a popular spot for the last meal before the call to morning prayers.
I walked around a bit and then headed back to the hotel. I was still a bit too ampped form the travel so just unpacked a bit, took a shower and decided to go get the lay of the land. I retraced my route from last night and found the Rheem stand and hopefully they will be open tonight when Iftar begins so I can see just how good it is. I walked down to the downtown area just to figure out if I could find my way around and found most of the spots that the travel books talk about like Hashems, The King Hussein Mosque, The Eco Tourism Cafe, and Habbiah. The one place I want to find is a single family run store that I read about in the Jordan Times before I came over. It is in the same general area as Habbiah, but it just a single family store.
It is hard to get a first impression of Amman just yet since I came in at O' Dark Thirty and on a Saturday
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A mosque on the hillside walking down from 2nd Circle to Downtown. morning during Ramadan. Despite my somewhat limited Arabic skills I have made a pact to try to only speak Arabic and then break out into some sort of pidgin/Arabic/English combination if I really get into trouble. So far everyone is amazed that some American guy is making the effort to speak Arabic and that I have to tell them to please just speak Arabic. So far I have been in my sweet spot in terms of vocabulary so I haven't butchered anything yet and even had to tell a cab driver this morning to please start his meter! He was shocked to hear that come out of my mouth.
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