Sorry for the delay, I am too verbose…had to buy a larger plan! And if this one doesn’t come thru with pictures – I give up and we will move to the next day.
Hossan again meets us at 6 am and walks us to the airport and through all the requirements, fills out our customs paperwork, underlines the gate number on our tickets and sends us on our way. Of course the night before when he checked us in, he rearranged our seats to move us from the back of the plane to much better seats. First class service.
We are going to see the mosaics in St. George. It is a cartographic map discovered on the floor of the church. It is determined to be from 560 AD and accurately depicts the Holy Land.
Our tour guide Michel is a very nice gentleman. His father was a tour guide and his son is too, so it is a family business. Unfortunately, he is in the middle of having some extensive dental work done and is missing many teeth. It makes it hard for me to understand him, but he is very patient and repeats what we need.
Michelle, our guide
We travel to Madaba. In the late 1800’s, the Greek Orthodox Church was looking for a site to build on. The city had a requirement that they could only build on a site that once had a church. They researched and found this location. During construction, they discovered this map. In subsequent years, parts of the map were destroyed by fires, church activities and moisture. In 1964, the Volkswagen corporation undertook a restoration and preservation project.
Zeroing in on the Jerusalem portion of the map, it is extremely accurate depicting the four gates leading into the city, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the tower of David. Recent excavations of Jerusalem have actually discovered locations depicted on this map.
And now we are on to our second stop. Mount Nebo where it is said Moses stood and looked over the promised land that he would never be able to enter. This is also said to be the site where Moses died. On a clear day you can see to Jerusalem. The weather today is not clear, but we can see the Dead Sea and the river Jordan.
The ancient church on the property dates to the 4th century AD. During excavation in the 1930’s the mosaic floors were uncovered. They were immediately covered in sand to preserve them until they could be properly excavated. This process began in the 1960’s and was completed in the 1980’s. Some of the mosaic floors were removed and placed on the walls of the basilica.
Our two scheduled tours of the day are finished and we resume our 3 hour drive to Petra on the King’s Highway. Along the way, Michel brings up his concern over our schedule for the last day (and of course this has been my concern from the moment we got the proposed schedule). If we did as suggested, following our night in the desert of Wadi Rum, we would begin our day with a 2 hour Jeep drive in Wadi Rum then pack up and begin the more than 5 1/2 hour drive to Jerash, take a tour, then a one plus hour drive back to Amman for a city tour there. Oh yeah, then at the end of all that driving and touring, we check into our 5 star hotel for a few hours before being picked up at 11 pm to begin our flights home. All on the same day! I have been exhausted just thinking about this. I don’t think any of us have slept past 3 am this entire trip, so I already know this will be a challenge. Michel recommends we do the Jeep drive when we first arrive in Wadi Rum tomorrow, and when we wake up just drive to Jerash for our tour (that’s still a 5 1/2 drive) and then tour Amman before checking in to our hotel in Amman. This seems much more reasonable! My priority has been Petra, Jim is really excited about the Jerash part and Jordan and Audrey are looking forward to Wadi Rum. Michel promises we will see all the best sites. So we should all be covered. And as happy as I am with this resolution, no one is more pleased than our driver. He had called Michel when he got the schedule and said that’s more than 8 hours of driving plus the tours. So we now have a plan for all.
We stop along the way to see the world’s smallest hotel. It is actually an Airbnb.
We have been inundated with hustlers and salesmen hawking their wares for the last 10 days. And as Jordan said, one thing every site has – is a gift shop at the end. We have mostly learned to walk on, say no and avoid eye contact. So when the purveyor of the world’s smallest hotel room – which actually is an Airbnb- engages Jim as we head for the car, I am worried. But Jim just comes back with “fossils” that were actually gifted to him. Some of the “fossils” have been drawn on with marker.
We see the ruins of a castle
Jordan helps push a cyclist up the hill to give her a better start
Our beautiful hotel in Petra is directly across the street from the Petra museum…and from the looks of it the entrance to Petra.
Bottom right: This is the entrance to Petra across the street from our hotel. I walked over here at night hoping to get a glimpse of the ruins. I found out why I couldn’t see anything in the morning.
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