Back to Amman

Today (Tuesday February 18, 2020) we are driving back to Amman to take a flight to Tel Aviv, Israel. We woke up around 8 and had breakfast at the delicious buffet our hotel served. After eating we went and packed up our things and decided to go to the free Petra museum before driving back to Amman. It is very new (opened in 2019) and shows the history of Petra. It provides information about the Nabatean's life, their civilization, their life tools, statues discovered in Petra by archaeological excavations teams, and many other historical pieces. There was a small sign by the entrance saying it was paid for by the Japanese government as a gift to the Jordanian people which was nice to see. Jordan is not a particularly wealthy country, like some of the gulf petrostates and they are putting a lot of effort into properly preserving their historical sites.

Breakfast

Arrow pointing towards Mecca for Muslim prayer

The petra Museum

After looking around the museum we then routed ourselves back to Amman via Kerak Castle and the Dead Sea. The drive to the castle was about 2.5 hours and was quite interesting. Google maps took us through a wind turbine farm on a road that was not much wider than our car. Hunter would have had fun with his GTI but it was a bit tedious in our rented Renault. Eventually, we got there and were back in city driving which is quite intense. There are a lot of roads that you don't think should have two-way traffic, but they do. As we made our way up the hill to the castle, some boy told us we couldn't go up this one road and started showing us where to park. We came to find out that this was a common scam at they wanted 3JOD from us to park there. When we looked online at the castle, they said there was supposed to be free parking, so we told them no and left to find free parking just up the street. We didn't have any cash left anyways because we used it all for gas before leaving Petra and they didn't take Visa. Eventually, we found a place to park for free and went into the castle. We also tried to find a bathroom because we both needed to go from our long drive, but they again wanted money to use the toilets. It was very frustrating. I only had one coin left and it wasn't even enough to pay for the toilet, but the lady let me use it thankfully.

The castle is quite interesting. It is a crusader castle that was constructed in the 1140s. Originally, the Franks occupied the site followed by various Muslim armies an ending with the Turks in the 1800s. It was a very impressive but eerily abandoned fortress. Most recently it was the site of a terror attack in December 2016 that left 14 people dead, including a Canadian. While one may think this would impact tourism, apparently it didn't according to the local statistics.

    

Slit for firing arrows, narrow at the front to shield the archer while wider in the back to allow them variable range.

A view of one of the same slits from the outside

This room was very dark, this photo is using my camera's awesome nightmode. We could only barely see back to the door

After enjoying the views from the castle, we left and headed towards the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is Earth's lowest elevation on land at -430.5 m (-1412 feet). Unfortunately, the Dead Sea is receding alarmingly fast and is nearly half the surface area it was in the 1930s. They say it recedes one meter each year and they currently have projects going on to help stop it from receding. When we stopped at a viewpoint to take pictures and got out of the car, it was much much warmer than when we were at the castle which was very nice. It was also humid and windy. after taking pictures, we continued on our drive to Amman, passing by many of the Dead Sea resorts which were shockingly cheap as it is off season right now.

First view of the Dead Sea

Our little rental car. "Like a small jeep" according to the guy at enterprise..... okay then

The Dead Sea was very frothy. We weren't sure but suspected this was from the salt

Our lowest picture together

We got to Amman around 5pm and checked in at the hotel we booked - Days Inn. The online reviews were very good, however, upon arrival there were problems. First the reservation was for only 1 person, not two, and they said they were going to charge us much more for the room. But in the booking process on my phone, we never got an option to select the number of people and assumed that the usual standard of two people applied. I showed the receptionist how I booked and that no where did it let me pick the number of people, so he thankfully waived the fee. We then got our room keys and went to the room. I turned on the bathroom light and it wasn't working correctly and there was also a bobby pin on the floor which was alarming as the room clearly wasn't cleaned correctly. We went back down and asked to change rooms. They showed us two rooms, both of which were smoking rooms and we specially asked in the special requests when booking for non smoking room. They then said the only other option is a twin bed, which obviously wouldn't work well for Hunter and I, so we picked the least smelly of the two rooms. We put our stuff in the room and then went to get dinner.

After dinner, we returned to the hotel, showered, and researched things regarding Jerusalem, as that is where our adventure is taking us next! We found a lovely Air BnB to book and researched tour options for the complex city.