Day 9: Farewell Egypt!!
And so. It’s now time to leave the chaos and dust and noise of Egypt behind and head off to Jordan for one of the highlights of the trip – a visit to the “Rose City” of Petra. I must confess that, as we were planning this adventure, this was the part of the itinerary I was looking forward to the most. I grew up absolutely IN LOVE with Indiana Jones and so the scene with the Treasury in the Last Crusade is indelibly printed on my mind – so the opportunity to recreate that walk through the canyon is going to be an awe-inspiring experience! And I’m almost forgetting the part after Petra where we go stay in the desert and sleep in a bubble tent!! So exciting!!
Our day started early with a pick-up at 6am to head off to the airport for our flight back to Cairo. Unfortunately there were no direct flights between Aswan and Amman (the capital of Jordan) so today was basically a travel day, involving a lot of waiting around at airports. As before, we had someone for Meet and Assist at Aswan to help us with the check-in process (love it!) and we were able to swank past using our Star Alliance Gold status again and check-in on the business class line. Our luggage was checked straight through from Aswan to Jordan, so no need to pick anything up and recheck in Cairo (thank goodness!). The flight between Aswan and Cairo was pretty short (about an hour) and the most entertaining thing about it was the enthusiastically on-brand in-flight safety video that really did lean into the whole Ancient Egypt theme. Certainly gives the United safety video a run for its money!
We landed safely, disembarked and then proceeded to wait around for 5hrs before our flight to Jordan. We did a bit of airport lounge hopping to try and find decent wi-fi – and finally landed in one of the two Star Alliance lounges. The guy manning the front desk was a complete fruit loon – crazy high energy – quite the change from the disinterested fake welcomes you usually get at airport lounges! Alas, that was pretty much the best thing about the lounge as the food wasn’t all that great so after a while we headed out into departures to find a suitable lunch spot. We came across the Hippopotamus Cafe where ManpanionTM and Lisa had the Hippo Burger (Big Tasty!) and I had a salad as repentance for all the desserts I’d finally cracked and had been consuming on board the boat!! After lunch, it was back to the lounge until it was time to board – time passed surprisingly quickly as I think we were all immersed in the interweb catching up! This flight was a bit longer (about an hour and a half) – but enough time to enjoy that safety video one more time! I had the fortune to have a window seat this time, so I made the most of enjoying the view as we flew out of Cairo – it was fun seeing the Great Pyramids again and the surrounding desert.
We landed in Amman with a surprisingly hard thump (enough to make me think about breaking out into applause for a moment – I’m sure Thomas could do soooo much better!) and disembarked into the arrivals area. Immediately we could see a distinct difference to Egypt in how clean and shiny everything was! We had a greeter again and he easily shepherded through the immigration process – our bags arrived fairly quickly, we got out some local currency from an ATM, were introduced to our driver Mo (whose English was far better than Peter’s!) and we were off!! First impressions were very favorable (ManpanionTM approved of the state of the sidewalks) – and there was even Wi-Fi in the van, so yey!! This is more like it!!
We had about a 45 min drive from the airport to our hotel in Amman, where we would stay the night before setting off for Petra the next day. There are about 4 million people who live in Amman (the capital city of Jordan) which is sometimes known as the “White City” as its houses are made from limestone and residential districts look like white Lego blocks scattered on the hills. We have a city tour scheduled for our last day (after coming back from Petra and Wadi Rum) so we’ll get to explore the city a bit more then (except Lisa, who’ll have left by then – sorry Lisa!). So tonight, it was time to check in to the W, enjoy the luxury of the hotel and the stunning views of the city from our room and get a good night’s sleep ready for the next leg of our trip!
Day 10: Hello Petra!!
Today’s itinerary had us leaving Amman and making our way down to Petra. After a great night’s sleep and an awesome shower, we were feeling refreshed and ready for action!! We had a bit of a lie-in as we weren’t scheduled to meet Mo and our guide until 9am, so plenty of time to enjoy the spectacular buffet breakfast at the W – I still don’t know how I managed to resist the donut wall.
Stuffed full, we hustled downstairs on time and met our guide for Jordan, a chap called Salah with impressive wavy black hair and even more impressive girth! Fortunately Salah spoke great English so no problem understanding him this time – his biggest problem was staying awake!!! Honestly, I thought ManpanionTM was the World’s Greatest Napper – but on this trip, Lee Ann has certainly been giving him a run for his money. However, both of them are deeply outclassed by Salah who can quite literally fall asleep within the space of one word! He would be asleep – you would not realize it and ask him a question – he would instantly wake up, answer your question, then promptly go back to sleep again (snoring and all!!). It was really quite impressive to observe!
Anyway, we had a couple of sightseeing stops en route to Petra. The first stop was at a town called Madaba, known for its 6th-century mosaic map of the Holy Land in the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George. The Madaba Archaeological Park preserves the mosaic-rich Church of the Virgin Mary and artifacts from the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic eras. The mosaic itself is incomplete (due to an earthquake many centuries ago) but there was a replica on a board outside the church of how the complete map used to look and depicts the journey of Moses and Israelites through the Holy Land, including sites such as Jericho, Mount Sinai and the Jordan River.
After our stop at Madaba, we all piled back into the van and headed to another biblical historical site called Mount Nebo – the final resting place of Moses (although the exact location of his grave is unknown – allegedly). We drove through spectacular hills and scenery en route and, even though I’m not at all religious anymore, I did still remember some of the names of places from Sunday School and some of the stories of the Old Testament. The area is so weighty in significance for so many people, its impossible to not feel somewhat affected by it. Mount Nebo is an elevated ridge located in Jordan, approximately 710 metres above sea level. Part of the Abarim mountain range, Mount Nebo is mentioned in the Bible as the place where Moses was granted a view of the Promised Land before his death. Salah gave us some more ancient history and pointed out some of the places where certain biblical events happened (I think one was where a spring was supposed to have issued forth from a rock) It was windy AF and I was definitely regretting my maxi dress fashion choice – I had to hold on to both my hat and my hem!! It was also pretty chilly too – especially out of the sunshine! As well as the monument to Moses, there was an impressive display of mosaics inside the chapel, again from the 6th century. There was also an olive tree in the garden that had been planted by John Paul II on his tour of the Holy Land as well as a monastic presence on the mountain that extends from the second half of the 4th century to the 19th century.
After our tour of Mount Nebo, we were then taken to see how mosaics were actually made, as we were given a tour of the factory supported by the Noor Al hussein Foundation – a community development program established by Queen Noor of Jordan that offers employment and education opportunities to underprivileged and underserved population. Here’s the blurb from the Hussein Foundation’s website: Her Majesty Queen Noor founded the Noor Al Hussein Foundation (NHF) in 1985, and in 1999, the King Hussein Foundation (KHF). The non-profit non-governmental organizations which Queen Noor chairs, were influenced by her innovative, holistic approaches to regional development challenges. The foundations’ programs have advanced development thinking in Jordan and the Middle East through pioneering best practice models in the fields of poverty eradication, women and youth empowerment, microfinance, health, and arts as a medium for social development and cross-cultural exchange. They provide training and capacity-building expertise in these areas in the broader Arab and Asian regions. The mosaic factory was proud of its association with the Foundation and the employment it was giving to young women, in particular. You would have to be young to work there because the process of making the mosaics was incredibly intricate – requiring both youthful eyes and a very steady hand!! We learned that mosaics are actually made back-to-front – the teeny tiny little chips of stone (could be marble, granite, jade etc) are stuck onto a fabric canvas (which has the pattern outlined on it) using a flour-based glue – and are stuck on backwards – ie the finished (smooth side) is facing downwards and the rough side facing upwards. After the pattern is complete and the (potentially thousands of) pieces are all in place, the surface is covered with a cement to hold everything together. It is then clamped for a week to let the cement set and dry and, when its ready, it is flipped over and then the fabric (which is now facing upwards) is detached from the stones by gentle washing with water which dissolves the flour glue. The canvas is then simply lifted off and – hey presto – a beautiful, smooth mosaic is revealed!! As you can imagine, this whole process takes a ton of time – and the cost of the various pieces that we then saw in the showroom next door was dependent on the intricacy of the piece and, consequently, the time spent putting it together. One particular piece did catch my eye – it was very different in style to everything else as it was black and white – and not biblically themed! So, yes, we ended up getting it for the SkyNest – as well as a few other lovely pieces (including this gorgeous hand-painted ostrich egg!).
After the mosaic factory, we got back in the van and continued on our way to Petra, making one additional stop at a spring in Ma-an. I can’t remember exactly why this spring is famous, other than it maybe being Holy Water somehow – so we all gingerly dipped our fingers in it as that seemed to be the appropriate response to this stop-off! (none of us were quite brave enough to actually drink it!).
We finally made it to Petra just before 4pm and got checked into our hotel, the Petra Movenpick, which was literally steps away from the entrance to the Petra site – VERY convenient!! As our rooms weren’t quite ready, we decided to make good use of our time (and proximity) and pay a quick visit to the Petra Museum, which houses many artefacts recovered from the Petra site and a ton of information about the various peoples that lived there over time. We spent about a half hour in the museum admiring all the various statues and busts before heading back to the hotel to pick up our keys and also take advantage of the Chocolate Happy Hour! Yes – there was a chocolate fountain set up in the beautiful internal courtyard of the hotel (which was gorgeous, btw) and so you could rock on up and the guy manning it would give you a chunk of fruit or cake, doused in liquid chocolate. I kinda wanted to just bury my face in it so one little chunk of red velvet cake drizzled with chocolate probably did more harm than good in that it Awakened The Sugar Beast – but left it unsatisfied! Ah well. After that, we headed into the bar for Actual Happy Hour, so ManpanionTM got himself a G&T while I stuck with Perrier. The bar had a great upscale feel to it – decorated in a very luxurious style with lots of beautiful wooden and ironwork decorative elements and stunning molding on the ceiling. It was a very nice place to while away some time.
Dinner was at a local place called “My Mom’s Recipe Restaurant” – maybe we should have been a bit more suspicious because of the Westernized name, but both Salah and Mo recommended it highly as a great place to get excellent local food (we were all about the dips and “mush” by this point in our trip!). So we met Mo for our 1 min transfer down the street (he insisted on driving us as he “had nothing else to do”!) and headed out. The restaurant looked great – fun interior decor with tons of cool lamps and carpets and rugs – but the food pretty much sucked. I had an extremely disappointing lamb and rice dish that is a local specialty – but it was just a hunk of lamb bone with a tiny scrap of meat clinging to it. Nothing like the tender, fragrant lamb I’d had the day before at the W hotel!! Some of the dips (hummus, baba ganoush etc) were better – but all in all, it was a pretty underwhelming meal. And – unlike in Egypt – things cost actual money here so it was not a cheap meal!! Ah well – guess you can’t win em all. At least it was super close to the hotel, so just a 5 min walk and we were back in our rooms, ready for the next day’s big adventure – PETRA!!!
