Blogs from West, Jordan, Middle East - page 3

Madaba lies approximately one hour from Amman and is most famous for its mosaics. You might have heard of the 6th century Madaba Map which is a large mosaic in the Byzantine Church of Saint George displaying the holy land. But this is not the reason why I have convinced my boyfriend to stop in Madaba for a few days. On the contrary I am more into softer fabrics and after discovering that Madaba is also a carpet city I have become dead-set on finding myself a magic carpet. I have grown up in a house with oriental rugs and I love the earthy tones of such carpets. In my stepfathers summerhouse there used to be a particular massive kelim carpet which was all eroded from decades of use. I love it. To me it is ... read more

Geo: 31.7195, 35.7941In addition to being windproof, our tent was also exceedingly dark. Before the sun rose, I heard what sounded like a persistent hum. While it sounded like rain, I was convinced it couldn't be, given where we were. I went out to the necessary a little after 7:00am, and while the sun was now up, I could clearly see in the sand the distinct impressions of rain drops. I later confirmed that there had indeed been rain showers earlier that morning. While there were rudimentary toilets (and showers...no one partook), there was no way to really get clean after the previous day's activities, but we resigned ourselves to this fate and simply got up and washed as best we could. Whatever electricity there had been the day before was exhausted from the solar generator, ... read more

I had a good sleep after the day at Petra, so we went down early for breakfast at the El-Rashid Hotel. Again, this is budget, so the breakfast was very limited, but was not bad. I think they may make you an omelette upon request, but we just had bread and labneh, with tea/coffee. Then we took off. We decided to head down the road less travelled and made our way towards Little Petra. Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn somewhere because the signs were not very forthcoming. We followed signs to Wadi Araba, but this is on the flatlands west of the mountains, which meant we took a windy mountain road that wound up ending in a gravel road with potholes. We were unsure how much further it was, so we turned back and found ... read more

Today, we should visit Jerash in the morning. In the afternoon, there was more time for Madaba, because we didn't had that much time yesterday to see everything. But first, we had breakfast at our rooftop restaurant in our hotel (Mariam hotel, in Madaba). Again, the breakfast contained out a small English breakfast (eggs, vegetables, some small lamb sausages), flat bread with hummus, and small, sweet breads, coffee, tea and fresh juice. After breakfast, we left to Jerash, together with our guide Omar and of bus driver Waél. Jerash is one of the best kept Roman city's of the world, and the best kept Roman site of the Middle East. Only 5-10% was found, the other parts are still buried at the site or buried underneath the modern city of Jerash. In the Old Testament, Jerash ... read more

Today was the day: I finally go to Jordan! Before my trip, people asked me why I wanted to visit Jordan, a country in the Middle-East. People think that Jordan is also very restless due the Arabic restless, but that's not true. A time ago, I saw a TV travel program where the Dutch Erica Terpstra (old politician and old athlete) was visiting Jordan. She went to Amman and I really like the atmosphere, it looked like a "1000-and-one-night", fairytale. Then, she visted Petra. I was very wondering what was behind "the Siq", a narrow canyon with a big height. Then, you saw the Treasury of Petra. I never saw that in my life, and my mount fell open: This couldn't be true! Since that moment, I would like to visit Jordan and started to read ... read more