Finally, the next adventure starts, it seems to have taken a mammoth amount of work to organise and I’m not sure that Jo will be traveling for the whole trip as she keeps saying that it will be the death of her! I have a plan if that happens which will be to contact family and continue the journey in her memory.
Covering twelve countries in all, the first three of which were easy in the planning stage, we will be heading around Africa which is where our initial planning started to unfold as there are a lot of countries there that we can’t enter or would be very silly to do so. By plan ten the human and I felt as though we were making progress only to find out that one country was going to have a visa problem and we started on plan 11 or was it 26, who knows.
With only one visa still pending we were packed and heading for Luton airport via Zoe’s home to collect her and her backpack, next stop should be …….
Zoe’s settee! Having arrived in Stourbridge and done some catching up with folks, the humans had gone for showers ready to begin our late night travel journey, as Jo checked the emails for the last time the whole plan came crashing down as our flight had been cancelled. Panic ensued, I kept out of the way as the women rang airlines and frantically tapped on keyboards trying to resolve the situation. Forty five minutes later and an hour before we should have been leaving, we had a new flight from a new airport which left us losing a precious day of seeing things. With the transfers reorganised and the hotel informed we settled to a restless night on the sofa.
The next day dawned, and we headed to the coach pick up point in Dudley only to find that the whole bus station had vanished! Dudley is having a new tram system and twenty minutes later we finally found another person also looking for the coach, we arrived at the stop with minutes to spare. We were off, the motorways filled with water as the rains descended but we were moving, well until we came to an abrupt stop on the M40. Fifty minutes ticked by before the coach started once more and we crawled past the accident that had stopped all traffic. Pulling into Heathrow we raced across the concourses finally arriving at the correct check in.
An hour later we climbed onto the plane and the plane moved off its stand and then stopped, the minutes ticked by another hour gone, I was starting to wonder if the trip was cursed and tried to keep a positive trunk on it all. Finally, we took to the air and sat watching films as the five hour flight passed. Disembarking we trundled through passports, visas and luggage claim, we had finally arrived in….
Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is a country in the Levant region of West Asia, bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and the Palestinian West Bank and Israel to the west. The Jordan River, flowing into the Dead Sea, is located along the country’s western border, while Jordan has a small coastline along the Red Sea in its southwest, separated by the Gulf of Aqaba from Egypt. Amman is Jordan’s capital and largest city, as well as the most populous city in the Levant. After a restless night we were ready to attack the wonders of Amman.
Amman is the capital and the largest city of Jordan, and the country’s economic, political, and cultural centre. The earliest evidence of settlement in Amman dates to the 8th millennium BC, in a Neolithic site known as ‘Ain Ghazal, where the world’s oldest statues of the human form have been unearthed. The city was known as Rabat Aman during the second millennium BC and served as the capital of the Ammonite Kingdom, centred at the Amman Citadel. In the 3rd century BC, the city was renamed Philadelphia and made a regional centre of Hellenistic culture. Under Roman rule, Philadelphia was one of the ten Greco-Roman cities of the Decapolis. The Rashidun Caliphate conquered the city from the Byzantines in the 7th century AD and renamed it Amman. Throughout most of the Islamic era, the city alternated between periods of devastation and abandonment and periods of relative prosperity as the centre of the Balqa region. Amman was largely abandoned from the 15th century until 1878, when the Ottoman Empire began settling Circassians there.
Our small very tired group was up and out by 9 am having lost a day with all of the problems we now only had one day to explore the city. Breakfast gave us a boast before we hit the streets. First stop was the Al Husseini Mosque, the oldest mosque in Amman, the mosque stands on the site of an earlier mosque that was built during the reign of Caliph Omar Ben Al Khattab’s (634-644 AD) and renovated during the Umayyad era (661-750AD). On the 22nd of Jul. 2019 Jordan’s King Abdullah II bin Al-Husseini had ordered the restoration of Al Husseini Mosque in Amman, after the second floor of the mosque was engulfed by a fire that time.
As it was Friday we weren’t able to enter so having taken a few snaps we set off for our next destination finding ourselves in a bustling market with the aroma of spices wafting through the air it reminded us of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.
The streets were grubby with a mix of old and new buildings, we passed the Jordain wooden trolleys parked next to the much more modern stainless steel variety which made me chuckle.
As Jo took the lead she came to a sudden stop and waved up at the brown sign before disappearing round a corner, the sign told me it was the Nymphaeum. Built in AD 191, this had been an elaborate public fountain and was once a large, two-storey complex with water features, mosaics, stone carvings and possibly a 600-sq-metre swimming pool, all dedicated to the nymphs. As we peered through the railings, we realised it was closed and with so much more to do we pressed onwards.
Literally around the next corner we arrived at the Roman Theatre a 6,000 seat, 2nd century Roman theatre. A famous landmark in the Jordanian capital, it dates back to the Roman period when the city was known as Philadelphia. Built in honour of Emperor Antoninus Pius (138–161 CE) it was stunning.
A colonnaded path led us into the entrance and having flashed our Jordan Pass and headed inside. It was white, very very white and in the sunlight, I could feel my eyes watering.
The steeply banked seats seemed to go up and up and up as Zoe headed upwards Woolly and I decided to stop at the second tier, my knees would not have liked the climb.
Woolly says – To the left was a doorway which on entering we found ourselves in the Jordan Museum of Popular Traditions, a wonderfully cool space to help with the sweat and even better it was full of wonderful costumes and headdresses that are worn for weddings and official occasions.
At the opposite side was another small museum, the Jordan Folklore Museum, filled with cases of instruments, swords and daggers and small displays showing the traditional methods of grinding coffee, milking sheep and all manner of other day to day tasks.
Opposite the theatre was a building with one rounded side and a flat front, we walked around its exterior to find a way in
Another small theatre greeted us, this was the Odeon. The Odeon is a small 500 seat theatre in Amman, Jordan. Archaeologists have speculated that the Odeon was most likely enclosed by a temporary wooden roof that shielded the audience from the weather and with the temperatures rapidly rising by now would have been much appreciated for us. The building is a Roman Odeon, built in the 2nd century CE, at the same time as the Roman Theatre next to it, recently restored along with the nearby Nymphaeum fountain it was lovely.
A quick stop for a cold drink in a lovely café before grabbing a taxi to take us up to the Amman Citadel. The Citadel has a long history of occupation by many great civilizations. Evidence of residents since the Neolithic period has been found and the hill on which is stood was fortified during the Bronze Age (1800 BCE). The hill became the capital of the Kingdom of Ammon sometime after 1200 BCE. It later came under the sway of empires such as the Neo-Assyrian Empire (8th century BCE), Neo-Babylonian Empire (6th century BC), the Ptolemies, the Seleucids (3rd century BCE), Romans (1st century BCE), Byzantines (3rd century CE) and the Umayyads (7th century CE). After the Umayyads, came a period of decline and for much of the time until 1878, the former city became an abandoned pile of ruins only sporadically used by Bedouins and seasonal farmers.
It was incredible with views across the city.
Most of the structures still visible at the site are from the Roman, Byzantine, and Umayyad periods. We wandered amongst the ruins finding all manner of walls and pillars.
Reaching the Umayyad Palace, built during the first half of the 8th century, it is now largely ruined, with a restored domed entrance chamber, known as the “kiosk” or “monumental gateway”. It was beautiful with some wonderful carvings still remaining on the walls.
Stepping out of the opposite door to the one we had entered by we were left speechless at the sites in front of us which had once formed the complex around the palace.
Just over the brow of the hill was the Jordan Archaeological Museum built on the hill in 1951. Full of cases of artifacts dating from the Iron age onwards it made a great place to wander round in the cool environment and find out some more about Jordans history.
A short walk away was yet another stunning building, the Temple of Hercules, it is thought to be the most significant Roman structure in the Amman Citadel. According to an inscription the temple was built when Geminius Marcianus was governor of the Province of Arabia (AD 162–166), in the same period as the Roman Theatre in Amman. It was wonderful and knocked spots off the temple we had seen inside, Turkey.
We were exhausted from our lack of sleep and the heat so decided to head back towards the digs, passing all sorts of different shops on route.
Woolly says – With a very early start on the morrow I was more than happy to stop for some food and a rest before heading back. Amman was amazing with all of the noise, grubbiness and friendly people it had been a great start to our travels.