I wanted to talk a little bit more about Jordan, post some pictures and tell a couple more stories. Check out the pictures for sure. I took over 100 so there are quite a few but there are pictures of Frankfurt (where we stopped on the way to Jordan), the resort we stayed at and Petra all combined together in one album. Here are a few of my favorites.Here is a shot in Frankfurt, we had an 8 hour layover here and while we were completely exhausted we thought it would be a better plan to go drink some beers on the Rhine River, good plan.
This is the Dead Sea, where I went in and floated around for a while, it is really quite amazing, almost surreal the way you float.
This the canyon that you have to walk down to get to the heart of where the sites are in the desert at Petra. This canyon has been carved over thousands of years by flash floods and wind. The rock is sandstone and you can see in the pictures all of the layers from the thousands of floods and different layer of colored sand.
This is the building that they call the Treasury, this is because they think it was a building that played a big role in the civilization's economy. It is the most well preserved building that was carved out of the sandstone. It is amazing to see in person. You can see the Greek and Egyptian influences in many of the pictures with the columns and pyramid shaped carvings.
This is the sunset that happens every night over the Dead Sea. Right where the sun is setting is Jerusalem. At night you can see the lights of Jerusalem lit up. I know the sun sets everywhere, everyday but the sunset here was simply amazing. I think I watched it 4 of the 5 days I was there.
Overall the trip was pretty flawless, at no time did I feel unsafe and the people in Jordan both working at the hotel and just people that I met at our meeting were some of the most sincere and kind people I've ever met in my travels.
We did have a bit of a hiccup getting home where we almost didn't make it out. I'll share that story now because it all ended up fine but at the time it was touch and go for a while. We had a 3AM flight out of Amman to Frankfurt, the hotel is 45 minutes from the airport so we had a car picking the four of us up at 12:3o at the hotel. We all met in the lobby at 12:30 and at 12:45 we were informed that we did not in fact have an appointment for a car driver. The hotel got on the phone to call a cab but again were are 45 minutes from the closest major area. The cab arrived at the hotel at 1:15 and we piled in, the cab didn't have room for the four of us and our luggage so the hotel put our luggage into one of the hotel trucks to follow our cab to the airport. The road to the airport is a long, dark, winding road with a couple of security stops with soldiers with guns. We get to the airport around 2AM but because our cab driver was flying down this long, dark, winding road we were a good 10 minutes ahead of the truck with our luggage. The airport in Amman is basically controlled by the luggage handlers, these are the guys that jump you when you get dropped off and escort you through getting to the ticket counter and then expect a tip. We get jumped right away and when the luggage guys realize that we are very late for our flight, they leave one guy to wait for our luggage and another guy starts to get us through the security you have to go through before you even get to the the ticket counter. The guy spoke broken English and at one point he actually said "I know a guy". This was important because a bus load of Asian students had just been dropped off and heading into the security area was a nightmare. The baggage guy had us flash our passport to some guy and then we head to the security area. He grabbed our carryons and threw them on a belt, no take out your laptop, no take out your toiletries. That metal detector thingy was too busy, so he plowed us over to the other one where I honestly think I walked through the metal detector with one of the Asian students, we grabbed our bags off the other belt and headed to the ticket counter, still having no idea if our larger bags have made it. We were all flying business class which in the scheme of things helped us immensely. When we got to the counter it was kind of crazy, there were 4-5 people behind the counter but after a while we realized that only one of them really worked for the airline. All of them were smoking cigarettes and our baggage escort was able to get the guys attention and he came over. He wasn't happy with us, we were late and he had some other major shit going on. I could go on and on more here but our bags showed up right after we did and after waiting and waiting for 30 minutes not knowing if we were going to get boarding passes we finally did, we made it through passport control and another security area and made it onto our plane with a couple of minutes to spare. When my bag came out in DC I was elated because I did not have a lot of confidence, it was at most 20 minutes between when they checked our bags and when the plane pulled away from the gate.
Anyway that was a long story but it was totally crazy and pretty nerve racking to go through at 2AM at the Amman airport. Oh and by the way we each had to tip the baggage escorts like 30 bucks, they made out like bandits but you know what they helped get us on the plane and get home.
Jay and Joanne will be here in the morning, I'll be heading to Baltimore to pick them up in the morning.
