Day 16: The Amman of it All
I had been twenty-seven years in my life before I ever truly stepped foot in the Middle East, or at least aanywhere outside its government subsidized airports that ferry millions of passengers on subsidized fares back and forth from the New World to India.
That changed this year with Egypt & Cairo. If there was ever going to be a place to change it, Egypt was it. Of course, once you open the damn, the water flows, man, and Jordan was next up. After touring through Jordan's finest offerings in Wadi Rum, Petra & The Dead Sea (admittedly, you can get the Dead Sea experience from the Israel side), we got a full daay to experience their finest city.
In reality, it started with one last lost city, one last series of archaelogically relevant ruins and structures. One last tour of the complex history of this area, one last time understanding how many times these areas changed hands, from Greek to Roman to Nabutean, to Byzantine to Islamic, to Crusader Catholic, to Ottoman and on and on. But behind all these trying changes, what is left behind is still staggering.
Jerash was the one place I really wanted to see around Amman (in reality, it is about 45 minutes away), as it came up on multiple sites during the nearly ten minutes I spent researching Amman. I had no idea how good it would be.
After a series of winding roads and about two different experiences of getting lost and trying to re-set the GPS in the limited window we had with decent enough service. We finally did find the car park for Jerash, which we knew immediately was the right place given the towering Hadrian's Arch right around the corner - welcoming all to its many mysteries held behind it.
The path to the actual entrance of the Jerash Archaeological Park was through Hadrian's Gate, an elongated Hippodrome, and a series of small ruins. These are impressive enough to cause you to take too many photos and realize quickly if you want to get through this with any expediency, some haste would be required.
Beyond the visitors center lies a smaller gate, the one that would in ancient times welcome people to the city, with a real gift behind it. Here laid a beautiful open oval with roman columns surrounding the perimeter. It is probably this moment we realized that Jerash is something special, far more well preserved and/or reconstructed than we had thought it would be.
There are two main paths through the fairly large park. The first extends right out from the Main Oval through ruins, buildings, countless columns and a few gates, all teh way to the end of the park - the end of the ancient city. The other path was higher up to the left, which took you to some of the main sites within the park, including temples to Zeus and Artemis (so named despite being built mostly under Roman rule). We decided to start with the harder portion and go to the upper path first outwards towards the end, and then back on the main collonnade (the main road).
The first sights were a partially reconstructed temple of Zeus, and more stunningly, a very compact, but still grand roman theather in near perfect condition. We entered on what would ostensibly be the stage, with a wall of semi-circle rows climbing upwards grandly. After the amphiteater was a walk up and down a few small hills, passing multiple ruins of old churches (mostly Byzantine - 300-500 AD) that had aew gems. The best was a church to two old Saints that had a nearly fully complete mosaic on its ground showing birds and flowers. Just beautiful.
The final truly great site on the top path was the Temple to Artemis, which doubled as giving amazing views of hte lower path main collonnade and the series of columns throughout the Jerash park.
We finally reached the 'North Gate' (Hadrian's Arch being hte South Gate) and took the walk backwards as briskly as possible (aka 30 minutes due to various picture breaks). The walk back was so impressive given the state of this main walk. The walls & columns were well preserved, a large fountain at the Nympheum (some area that dispensed water), a couple gates, and of course the staggering view of the main oval from the other end, with the temple of Zeus and the amphiteater behind it.
Overall, the walk through the whole park took two hours, and easily could have taken more if we had a bit more time on our hands (not mentioned so far, this is my last day of the trip, with my flight out of Amman at 2AM). We left Jerash extremely impressed and completely content. It is not fair to say it was our last site we visited, but the last real one that required a drive, a map, and hundreds of photos, and for that it was a great finale.
Back in Amman, we first went to lunch at Tawaheen Al Hawa, a really nice, ornate traditional restaurant in a fairly affluent-looking residential area. Tawaheen was the type of place with low seats, a large table with a center area where they put all the food. It was the type of place that housed 90% locals and a bunch of people settling in for a meal and a hookuh session with no intention of leaving anytime soon,
We got a Chicken Freekah (a grain similar to rice), lamb chops (damn good again), burekhas and a chicken liver dish that tasted better than any prior chicken liver dish to my non-chicken-liver-liking pallatte. The restaurant was our last full meal we had, and it was, like Jerash, a grand sendoff.
After lunch was our last real siteseeing of the trip, a visit to Amman's Citadel complex, a roman ruin area being restored within Amman's city limits. Compared to Jerash this was clearly not up to that standard, but it was still impressive to see a fairly large complex of ruins, complete with their own temple of Zeus and a half-restored Byzantine-era palace, inside city grounds.
The real star of the Citadel is really the views its lends of Amman, stretching out endlessly in all directions. We went to Google and found out the population of Amman was 2.2m people, which sounds like a serious understimate given how sprawling Amman seemed.
After the Citadel, we descended a few flights of tricky stairs down to ground level to see the large, well preserved, Roman Amphiteater built right in the heart of Amman. The seats were built into another hill. The size probably holds upwards of 5,000. There is a large square in front of it with people milling about, just living life. Wouldn't it be nice if we could have a situation in the US where groups of people could mill aropund living normal life with a giant staggering Roman ruin right behind them?
After a quick respite at the hotel to have appetizers, visit the sauna, and for me to pack, we headed back to downtown. First stop was Habibi for more Kunafa, but not the same Habibi. Apparently, we went to the wrong of the two Habibi's (not that I sensed any real difference), but the one we went to this time was down an alley - an alley that was filled to the gills with people queueing up for some of that sweet Kunafa.
We then played our hand at the bargain and souvenir hunting game one last time, before settling down with a Jordanian staple - hummus and falafel - at a place well reputed for giving you just that and nothing more. Hashem Restaurant showed up in my research, was in the Lonely Planet, and generally seemed to be doing a good enough job advertising itself that half the crowd at this semi-outdoor, alley-way restaurant with plastic chairs were Westerners.
They basically serve one thing: three hummuses (hummii?) with pita bread, and a plate of small falafels. Everything was made great. If we had more space in our stomachs, we probably could have finished every drop of hte hummus and gotten another plate of the falafel. This is a simple, cash only, 'we only serve one thing' type of place, the one that better be good to last. Hashem was good, and it has lasted in style since 1951.
Finally, we headed back to the hotel one last time, to spend 90 minutes at the Marriott's Champions Bar (like in many Arabic cities, the hotel bars double as general use bars for the public) for me to have a few pints of Jordanian Beer, this being the first place I had been to serve something other than Amstel. We chatted, played rummy, and (I) sipped beer. A perfectly small way to end a grand, large vacation.
I had been twenty-seven years in my life before I ever truly stepped foot in the Middle East, or at least aanywhere outside its government subsidized airports that ferry millions of passengers on subsidized fares back and forth from the New World to India.
That changed this year with Egypt & Cairo. If there was ever going to be a place to change it, Egypt was it. Of course, once you open the damn, the water flows, man, and Jordan was next up. After touring through Jordan's finest offerings in Wadi Rum, Petra & The Dead Sea (admittedly, you can get the Dead Sea experience from the Israel side), we got a full daay to experience their finest city.
In reality, it started with one last lost city, one last series of archaelogically relevant ruins and structures. One last tour of the complex history of this area, one last time understanding how many times these areas changed hands, from Greek to Roman to Nabutean, to Byzantine to Islamic, to Crusader Catholic, to Ottoman and on and on. But behind all these trying changes, what is left behind is still staggering.
Jerash was the one place I really wanted to see around Amman (in reality, it is about 45 minutes away), as it came up on multiple sites during the nearly ten minutes I spent researching Amman. I had no idea how good it would be.
After a series of winding roads and about two different experiences of getting lost and trying to re-set the GPS in the limited window we had with decent enough service. We finally did find the car park for Jerash, which we knew immediately was the right place given the towering Hadrian's Arch right around the corner - welcoming all to its many mysteries held behind it.
The path to the actual entrance of the Jerash Archaeological Park was through Hadrian's Gate, an elongated Hippodrome, and a series of small ruins. These are impressive enough to cause you to take too many photos and realize quickly if you want to get through this with any expediency, some haste would be required.
Beyond the visitors center lies a smaller gate, the one that would in ancient times welcome people to the city, with a real gift behind it. Here laid a beautiful open oval with roman columns surrounding the perimeter. It is probably this moment we realized that Jerash is something special, far more well preserved and/or reconstructed than we had thought it would be.
There are two main paths through the fairly large park. The first extends right out from the Main Oval through ruins, buildings, countless columns and a few gates, all teh way to the end of the park - the end of the ancient city. The other path was higher up to the left, which took you to some of the main sites within the park, including temples to Zeus and Artemis (so named despite being built mostly under Roman rule). We decided to start with the harder portion and go to the upper path first outwards towards the end, and then back on the main collonnade (the main road).
The first sights were a partially reconstructed temple of Zeus, and more stunningly, a very compact, but still grand roman theather in near perfect condition. We entered on what would ostensibly be the stage, with a wall of semi-circle rows climbing upwards grandly. After the amphiteater was a walk up and down a few small hills, passing multiple ruins of old churches (mostly Byzantine - 300-500 AD) that had aew gems. The best was a church to two old Saints that had a nearly fully complete mosaic on its ground showing birds and flowers. Just beautiful.
The final truly great site on the top path was the Temple to Artemis, which doubled as giving amazing views of hte lower path main collonnade and the series of columns throughout the Jerash park.
We finally reached the 'North Gate' (Hadrian's Arch being hte South Gate) and took the walk backwards as briskly as possible (aka 30 minutes due to various picture breaks). The walk back was so impressive given the state of this main walk. The walls & columns were well preserved, a large fountain at the Nympheum (some area that dispensed water), a couple gates, and of course the staggering view of the main oval from the other end, with the temple of Zeus and the amphiteater behind it.
Overall, the walk through the whole park took two hours, and easily could have taken more if we had a bit more time on our hands (not mentioned so far, this is my last day of the trip, with my flight out of Amman at 2AM). We left Jerash extremely impressed and completely content. It is not fair to say it was our last site we visited, but the last real one that required a drive, a map, and hundreds of photos, and for that it was a great finale.
Back in Amman, we first went to lunch at Tawaheen Al Hawa, a really nice, ornate traditional restaurant in a fairly affluent-looking residential area. Tawaheen was the type of place with low seats, a large table with a center area where they put all the food. It was the type of place that housed 90% locals and a bunch of people settling in for a meal and a hookuh session with no intention of leaving anytime soon,
We got a Chicken Freekah (a grain similar to rice), lamb chops (damn good again), burekhas and a chicken liver dish that tasted better than any prior chicken liver dish to my non-chicken-liver-liking pallatte. The restaurant was our last full meal we had, and it was, like Jerash, a grand sendoff.
After lunch was our last real siteseeing of the trip, a visit to Amman's Citadel complex, a roman ruin area being restored within Amman's city limits. Compared to Jerash this was clearly not up to that standard, but it was still impressive to see a fairly large complex of ruins, complete with their own temple of Zeus and a half-restored Byzantine-era palace, inside city grounds.
The real star of the Citadel is really the views its lends of Amman, stretching out endlessly in all directions. We went to Google and found out the population of Amman was 2.2m people, which sounds like a serious understimate given how sprawling Amman seemed.
After the Citadel, we descended a few flights of tricky stairs down to ground level to see the large, well preserved, Roman Amphiteater built right in the heart of Amman. The seats were built into another hill. The size probably holds upwards of 5,000. There is a large square in front of it with people milling about, just living life. Wouldn't it be nice if we could have a situation in the US where groups of people could mill aropund living normal life with a giant staggering Roman ruin right behind them?
After a quick respite at the hotel to have appetizers, visit the sauna, and for me to pack, we headed back to downtown. First stop was Habibi for more Kunafa, but not the same Habibi. Apparently, we went to the wrong of the two Habibi's (not that I sensed any real difference), but the one we went to this time was down an alley - an alley that was filled to the gills with people queueing up for some of that sweet Kunafa.
We then played our hand at the bargain and souvenir hunting game one last time, before settling down with a Jordanian staple - hummus and falafel - at a place well reputed for giving you just that and nothing more. Hashem Restaurant showed up in my research, was in the Lonely Planet, and generally seemed to be doing a good enough job advertising itself that half the crowd at this semi-outdoor, alley-way restaurant with plastic chairs were Westerners.
They basically serve one thing: three hummuses (hummii?) with pita bread, and a plate of small falafels. Everything was made great. If we had more space in our stomachs, we probably could have finished every drop of hte hummus and gotten another plate of the falafel. This is a simple, cash only, 'we only serve one thing' type of place, the one that better be good to last. Hashem was good, and it has lasted in style since 1951.
Finally, we headed back to the hotel one last time, to spend 90 minutes at the Marriott's Champions Bar (like in many Arabic cities, the hotel bars double as general use bars for the public) for me to have a few pints of Jordanian Beer, this being the first place I had been to serve something other than Amstel. We chatted, played rummy, and (I) sipped beer. A perfectly small way to end a grand, large vacation.
