A Weekend in Jordan

What did you do last weekend? 

On a normal weekend, if I am lucky, I will go out to breakfast (my favorite meal) and then lay on my couch the rest of the time. Sometimes I will go out to get drinks or see other people, but I am 100% content with reading my book all weekend. After spending the week with a bunch of five year olds, I want to spend as much time by myself with no questions. 

Miss, what we do? 

Miss, when lunch? 

Miss, I go bathroom?

Although I have hit most of the places on the top of my "places to visit" list, I could not possibly go to every place in my two years of living in Qatar (This list pretty much includes every country in the world). So, instead of spending a whole week in some places, a quick weekend trip was going to have to be sufficient. So, once again, I packed up my backpack and headed to the airport after work on Thursday. This weekend's destination? Jordan! Read More...

Jordan is a country full of history and definitely deserves more than a weekend to do it justice, but we felt as if it was better than nothing! And we were up for the challenge. Before departing, we researched which spots we wanted to see. As we had a very limited amount of time, we knew we had to leave a lot out, but we decided that there were three places we really didn't want to miss. So we booked a tour that marketed itself as no less than 13 hours and set off!

After watching the sun set over Saudi on our way across the desert, we headed out in a sketchy cab down, down, down to the Dead Sea. We had decided that swimming in the Dead Sea was a must have for our weekend and the easiest way was to just stay there! We were unable to see it right away though as we had a pretty early morning wake up call. We left before our hotel had breakfast available, so they packed us these breakfast to go boxes (which were huge and yet had only a tiny sandwich inside) and we headed on our way.

Our driver for the day, Wael, knew a ton about history and Jordan and was an amazing guide for our long day. Wael seemed to know literally everything and basically never stopped speaking the whole time. Our first stop was to take a look at the salt from the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea is known for being at the lowest elevation (of land) in the world at more than1400 feet below and that supposedly you float very easily when swimming in it. I hadn't actually gotten in it yet, but seeing these huge chunks of salt was pretty awesome.

Wael also told us a story about this site. This tall pillar is supposedly the site of Lot's wife turning around. I really don't remember much beyond that, but I am sure if you know the story, you can fill in the blanks.
Right on the other side, you have a sight of Israel! Hey there!

We stopped for a quick coffee break...

It had some pretty awesome views.

And some musical entertainment!

By the coffee shop, there was a pack of stray dogs that seemed to wander around and "protect" the area.

After relaxing and caffeine-ing up, the dogs made sure we left.

We stopped along the way for the views before arriving at Petra.

We finally arrived at the famed Petra! Samir, our new guide, met us outside to walk us in. For those who don't know, Petra is an ancient Nabataean city that was built (possibly) around 300 BC. It is known for its rock carved architecture and is arguably the most famous site in Jordan.

When you visit such a highly publicized and also beautiful place, you immediately start taking pictures, marveling at every thing.

I quickly learned that the longer we walked, the better it got.

These black lines are evidence of water levels, as Petra is also famous for its system of water aqueducts, and you can see at the top, the ledge through which the water flowed.

As you walk through the Siq, the narrow gorge that is the entrance to Petra, the light changes. Every time you take a step, the light changes and so it seems do the colors in the sandstone.

(sometimes the rocks even look like fish!)

After walking for quite a while, all of the sudden, you see it.

The Treasury (Al- Khazneh) is the most well known site inside Petra, mostly known for being in Indiana Jones. It is pretty spectacular after walking through the narrow gorge and spilling out into the courtyard.

Petra used to be known not only as an important archaeological and historical site, but as a huge tourist hotspot. I had heard that it was so crowded it became almost unpleasant. Fortunately for us (unfortunately for the Jordanian Tourist Board) it was not that crowded. Samir told us that although Petra used to have over 5,000 visitors per day, it was lucky to have around 500 per day nowadays.

Once you go past the Treasury, you enter more of a town. There are donkeys everywhere, which are available to ride, but I have ridden a donkey before, and no thank you (la shukran!) to doing that again.

Everywhere you look, there are buildings carved into the mountainsides. Mostly, these are tombs. You can tell which tombs were built by ancient rich families and which were not, based on how ornate they are.

There's even free wifi! ha.

After spotting some camels (hey, guys!) we came upon our new friend Saeed. Samir, our guide, told us that this guy is at Petra every day selling these sandstone rocks.

Samir had brought him some water to drink, but I think he preferred a little shower.

We made sure to each buy a small rock before wishing him good luck on the rest of his day.

We left Samir at this point, and wandered around a bit more before heading out. We unfortunately did not have time to visit the Monastery, which is also a huge draw in Petra.

We even found another vegetarian for Larisa to hang out with :)

We wandered up and down and explored some more architecture before needing a serious nap. At this point, it was probably around 2 o'clock. Although we had spent a serious amount of time in Petra, it was still early! But it was time for our second stop of the day and we were only about 8 hours into our day trip...