Some great things happened in Jordan. Really, some quite special moments. I'll be posting photo blogs of the two real highlights of the trip, Petra and Wadi Rum. But I wanted to have a post that highlighted my first few days in country. Some interesting stuff happened while I was in Amman: particularly, there was the struggle to find the bar that Litsy claimed was near the Jordan Tower Hotel. Jimmy (great Aussie who was staying in my dorm) and I walked in circles looking for beer. This proved fruitless, but was fun to remember exactly how stubborn I could be about trying to find things once I'd started. Anyways we spent way too much time looking for a place for beer. Turns out we needed to make our way to rainbow street in search of elusive beer (this being a Muslim country, beer isn't easy to come by).
Well, the context of the streets it happened to be pointing us down. We happened upon one particularly dark alley with a fair amount of distressed buildings around it and just one dude down at the end. Oh, by the way the end really wasn't clear in terms of what exactly it was. It just stopped being lit up and up a hill there was no way of knowing if the street continued or if this was a no-thru street. Anyways, as we approach this guy on the street on the too-dark road, walking up the hill. I notice that he has pulled out a knife and is brandishing it and he began kind of strangely hollering at Jimmy and I. This made us both rather uncomfortable. We walk in a long oval kind of around him. At this moment we noticed that there was a Jordanian approaching us from behind who had picked up speed. Right then, I was pretty concerned. I wasn't sure if the two dudes knew eachother, and most pressingly there was a guy jabbering at me in Arabic while playing with his switchblade on a pitch black street my first day in Amman. NOT a good look. Anyways, the guy behind us ended up being even more freaked out than Jimmy and I, and we escaped unscathed. But, it was a quick way to get the heart pumping and a good lesson about listening to Google Maps over some common sense in new places.
That night ended up pretty hysterically, we found beer at the Book Shop Cafe, which was really a great place to spend some time (although the beers were unbelievably expensive). Another interesting facet to the evening ended up being that the cafe, unbeknownst to us, converted into a hangout for gay Jordanians on Thursdays. So we spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out if we were in the right spot. Turns out we had a blast and were. But it also was a gay bar. Something, I didn't quite expect to be so easy to find in the center of Amman. Pretty interesting.
Overall, I ended up loving Amman after at first being a little overwhelmed with the congestion and noise-pollution. The food was fantastic and the company was excellent.
The next day, we went to Jerash which really was a treat. Roman ruins from at least 100AD that were preserved really well and were just remnants of a sprawling city. Easily the best ruins I've seen from Antiquity.
Here are some Jerash pics:
