22/2/22
I arrived at Amman Airport and paid my visa fee, which because the man charged me in GBP instead of JOD without asking, I paid an extra £5. Whyyyy? Anyway, once making my way through security and trying and failing to get money at the ATM, I was met by one of the hostel owners, who was picking me up. We talked about life things, and he told me about how he’d set up the hostel with a few other people just before covid and then each of them had had to get another job to be able to keep the hostel while everything was on lockdown. I told him about how I’m at a life crossroads and need to figure out what job is best for me next. He welcomed me to Jordan and then Amman at various points on the drive before we arrived at the hostel.
The hostel was very cute and there were quite a few people staying. I met a Brit from Essex, who had moved to Cardiff (ay, ayyy), and who told me about Jirash, a historical site which Gérardo, an Argentinian guy in the Dubai hostel, had recommended to me. I was pretty knackered so I had a tea, ate some snacks, had my first consistently hot long shower and went to bed. I was very excited to see Nancy, who was due to arrive in a few hours, but was also exhausted so the morning would have to do!!
23/2/22
Woke up around 08.30 and went in search of coffee to find one of the volunteers preparing a moka pot. He asked did we want some with our breakfast, which I enthusiastically accepted – it had been a long while since I’d had freshly ground Ethiopian coffee with Mubarak!! We had a right spread for breakfast and it was pretty glorious – lots of unspecified sauces, one of which was a sort of date syrup and was pretty nice!
We set off after breakfast and headed on a vague walking tour of the city as recommended by a volunteer at the hostel. We walked up and down many roads, past a primary school for girls, where they were all playing, pasta insane view over Amman, popped into a cute coffee and book shop, before winding down through narrow streets to hit the main market streets and buzz of the city. We wandered through, before finding a coffee pitstop. We sat on a balcony of a shisha place, filled with men, which was slightly bizarre since it was 2pm on a weekday but maybe people work short hours like Somaliland, who knows?! We watched the world go by overlooking some construction workers having a long lunch break next to some ruins.
We walked along the street and came across a huge plaza with a huge amphitheatre which held 6000 people. It looked a lot more in tact than Caerleon and was a LOT bigger!! We sat in the square and admired the theatre before climbing some steep steps up to the citadel. The place had some epic arches, Roman baths, and a Byzantine church among other things.
There were also epic views from the city of the rest of modern Amman with its mosques’ minarets scattered across the skyline. After doing the ruins enough justice, while avoiding as many catcalling boys as possible, we headed to a nice cafe overlooking Amman, first for a fresh lemon and mint juice, before getting a coffee to go (they had a flat white, eeeep!). We sat on some rocks and watched the sunset through the arches and the golden pink light spread across Amman.
We walked back at dusk, through the markets, stopping at a packed caf, which had no menu, but served fresh Jordanian food – we ordered falafel, hummus, beans, chips and pittas and I had a mint black chai, all for £3.50! Soooo cheap!! We sat in a little room of the main alley, which they then ushered two Germans into too – we joked that it was the tourist wing! We got snacks on the walk home and then chilled at the hostel, blogged and chatted with other hostellers. Two of the other girls in our dorm hoped to also go to Jerash in the morning.
24/2/22
I had a sad coffee, ate my final snacks from the shop (a fancy liquid chocolate with pistachios on top of cake and an OJ) before we packed up and left, getting an Uber to ditch our bags at our next hotel before we continued to the bust station to go Jerash. We found the bus to Jerash easily but it was empty and we had been warned at the hostel that it can take an hour or so to fill up. I left a jumper to dibs our seats and we went in search of a more substantial breakfast. We found £1 falafel baguettes which I was pretty happy about. By the time we went back to the bus, the bus was full, apart from our surprisingly still saved seats! We headed off and arrived in Jerash in less than an hour with only a few near-miss road accidents!
Jerash is a busy place, but we navigated the crazy roads and headed into the ancient city grounds, getting a coffee before hitting the history hard. The grounds were huuuuge. It took us over two hours to see everything and there were some insanely well preserved Roman roads, a plaza, a mosque, a cathedral, two amphitheatre, one of which had drums and a bagpipes playing – I only recently discovered in Dubai that the bagpipes is not only a Scottish instrument, but also an Arab one! We climbed towards the top of the amphitheatre to admire the view, stopping a little from the top due to a group of 5 young boys lurking ahead of us. Awhile later, they started calling to us and then I felt something hit my back. Once again, I had had things thrown at me again (this time it was seeds not rocks, so maybe I should class it as a victory, but why has this happened three times in the last two months while being in Muslim countries?!). My patience had run out and I shouted at them to ‘have some respect’ before a Muslim lady noticed the interaction and scolded them on my behalf. I smiled at her gratefully and they didn’t bother me again.
After Jerash, we walked towards the bus station, noticing a fmacy sweets shop, which we nosed in. I wanted tea and cake but the shop only did cake, but they showed us to a tea shop so we ordered our cake and they took it up to the tea shop for us to enjoy. It was pretty tasty. I had a baklava looking one which had some kind of cream/cheese in the middle as well as a more traditional one with cream and a type of semolina with pistachios, which a girl from our last hostel had recommended. We timed the bus well again and ten minutes after we got on the bus, we headed back to Amman.
Awhile later, we made it back to Amman. Since it was ruahour, it took longer than expected and by the time we’d convinced a taxi to take us to our hotel, we were there only slightly before our welcome talk with our tour group of eight with Intrepid. As expected we are the oldest at 27 for Nancy and 27 tomorrow for me, but most people were in their mid twenties and everyone seed pretty nice. I think I’ve already got a reputation for having too many opinions as I said I didn’t want to go inside an amphitheatre tomorrow which we’ve already seen alongside two others. I did say I was keen to go on another mosque tour though, since our hotel is right opposite a very impressive mosque. We listened to the itinerary and essentially the ground rules and then the guide Husam asked about dinner options. The option the group was keen on was ubering to the best local food joint, which Nancy and I went to yesterday. They went out and we decided to be old and grumpy and stayed in and ordered pizza. I had truffle pizza and it was darn delicious. No regrets. I wanted to buy wine for my birthday to drink in the desert tomorrow, but one of the others on the tour said alcohol is banned in the policy so that’s that. I’d never have known since I’m not good at reading small print, but now I do!
Currently listening to a chilled playlist lying in bed, blogging, chatting with Nance and stuffed full of pizza, so not a bad way to see out 26!
wanderingwelshie travels 