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Published: June 12th 2017
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Geo: 31.729, 36.0465
When we'd first left the airport with our first piece-of-crap rental car what seemed like weeks before -- though it had only been five days -- I'd somehow thought to ask to where I should return the vehicle. This proved very helpful as, despite the fact that the airport is brand new, amazingly modern, and well signed, there was not a single sign for "Rental Car Return." The man had said I should "go to the middle." The first "middle" I saw was a line for "official traffic." I took a leap of faith, drove up to the barrier, and took the little ticket that the machine spit out. We proceeded further, and now there were two choices of where to go, but no middle. What to do? I approached one gate, but nothing happened. Backed up...went to another. Pushed an intercom button. Someone spoke in Arabic and the barrier went up. I drove the car up to the curb and walked inside to the rental car counter. A lone man (but different than the "midnight shift guy" from our arrival) manned the counter. His English was poor, but he understood enough that I was returning a car. He
could not, however, find our rental agreement, though he seemingly searched through multiple large piles of paper. Frustrated, I told him to come outside with me and I could give him my copy. The rental was pre-paid, but upon arrival they'd taken an imprint of my credit card, which I had to sign, as a security deposit. At this point, I didn't care about the paperwork, but I wanted the imprint back. Given the multitude of dings and scratches already on the car, as well as multiple new rattles which were created during our rough driving, I did not want them trying to charge me for any of them. At this point a supervisor emerged from somewhere. His English was good. I explained the situation to him and he told me to "not worry about it," but I wanted the imprint. We unloaded -- leaving the car at the curb -- and followed them inside. Incredulously our paperwork was literally on the top of the main pile of contracts -- the same pile the other man had searched multiple times. Only in Jordan.
With the credit card imprint safely shredded we headed upstairs to check in for our flight. We
had used British Airways miles for these flights. To use up the otherwise useless miles, I booked two First Class and one Economy ticket. The maximum allowed award seats in First Class is two, so we had no option but to split up. With the flight taking such a short time, we weren't concerned. The airport was not busy at all, and as we passed the first document check, I was looking for First Class check-in, but was confronted with a completely empty bank of check-in counters manned by eager people, so we walked up to the closest guy, almost out of pity. He checked us in and we went to immigration and security. I had expected some kind of extra screening since we were going to Israel, but it didn't happen. They scanned our iris's again -- though it took the machine four times to confirm that I was in fact me.
Security was extremely fast and we were left with a couple of hours to kill. We went to the Royal Jordanian lounge. I asked if we could all enter, even though we didn't have three First Class tickets. The man was exceedingly kind and waved us in
with a "you are welcome." It was a beautiful lounge, spanning a huge mezzanine overlooking the main terminal building. They had a large buffet set up, where we had our lunch and enjoyed drinks and snacks while we waited.
When they announced boarding, we walked through the nearly empty terminal and right onto the plane. It was not full. As soon as the doors closed, the flight attendant came up and asked me if it was okay if she asked K to come sit with us. It was very kind. It was the last taste of Jordanian hospitality we would enjoy, and it was much appreciated.
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