Jordan: Jerash

In my opinion, the ruins of Jerash were the best things I saw in Jordan. Jerash is one of the best-preserved Roman cities in the world and there is evidence that it has been inhabited since the Neolithic period (7500-5500 BCE), though the Roman occupation started in 63 BCE and the ruins that we saw are from the 1st and 2nd centuries CE.

After an earthquake in 749CE the city shrank to a quarter of its size and began to lose its importance. It became buried in sand and excavations started in 1925 and still continue to this day - there are still many buried ruins to be discovered and a lot of rubble to be put back together to recreate the original buildings and columns.

You enter the site through Hadrian's Arch, which was built in commemoration of Emperor Hadrian's visit in 129CE.



After passing through the Arch, you can wander through the 250-meter-long Hippodrome where there used to be chariot races. The first picture below shows where the gates used to be that the horses entered through.  There was seating here for 15,000 people.





After passing through the south gate into the city, you come upon the forum, which is oval-shaped and lined with columns.





As I'm sure you can tell, we started out our day in the rain and ended in the sun so pictures from later in the day are nice and sunny. Below are some forum columns, in the sun this time.



Looking down on the forum from the top of the south amphitheater (the best way to get a picture of it). Look at the main road extending away from the forum, also lined with columns!





After walking through the forum, you wander past the Temple of Zeus.  This temple, when it stood complete, was actually enormous with an enclosed sanctuary and a huge staircase leading up to the temple itself:








Here is a model of what it should look like.  The stones are all still there - some off to the side in a huge pile and many still buried - so some day, hopefully, archeologists will be able to piece it all back together again.

The south amphitheater is located near the temple of Zeus, and it had a special spot you could stand on in the middle of the floor where you sounded like you were speaking through a microphone and your voice was proejcted so that the entire audience could hear you. Those Romans were so smart.





We had the entire site of Jerash to ourselves until sometime after 10am. The lack of tourists was very noticeable.  Here I am at the south amphitheater, all by myself:



Watch your step:



Next we wandered over to a church.  There were many churches in Jerash, but this one still has its mosaic floor mostly intact.  This is because it was buried under sand until sometime in the 1960's when archaeologists found the floor.  Note there are swastikas in the mosaics - they were a symbol of prosperity back then!





Next we approached the Temple of Artemis, which dominated the entire city.  Even the ruins dominate the city.  Artemis was the patron goddess of Jerash, which is why she got the biggest temple.  Note those pillars have been standing since the second century!! They actually sway in the wind, you can feel it if you touch them.







Below is the north amphitheater, this one likely used only for musical performances. It was significantly steeper than the south theater located by the temple of Zeus. This theater was steep enough that people had to walk up to find their seat and then continue walking upwards to exit so that they never had to walk down the stairs and risk falling. At the top of the theater were circular staircases built inside the walls for people to exit through.

The main north-south road that went through the forum.  The stones were laid diagonally to jostle the carriages less.



Some more pictures from around the site are below.  I really can't recommend visiting here highly enough, especially with a private guide.  I learned so much from him and could actually picture the city as it would have been back in the first and second centuries. This place was amazing.  GET YOURSELF TO JERASH.  :)





This was neat because it looks like a continuous staircase but there are actually seven landings hidden, each with 7 steps between them (7 was a lucky number).  The arch that originally covered the area between and above the central pillars is still all there, just on the ground next to where I stood when taking this picture.  They just need it to be put back up!

Jordan: Amman

We only spent 1 day touring around Amman, really more like a half day, but we used it as our home base for 3 days and spent maybe another half day just sitting in traffic around the city during those 3 days. Some of the traffic lights in Amman never change, I swear.

The main thing we did was take a guided tour of the Citadel in Amman. It sits on top of one of the original 7 hills of Amman - now Amman has grown so much that it encompasses 23 hills (so our driver said - I never counted but looking at Amman I believe it). The Citadel is surrounded by a 1700-meter long wall and was, at different times in history, a fortress and/or an open space for commerce and politics.

The Citadel is old. Excavations have uncovered evidence that it was inhabited as early as 1650BCE. Also, the museum at the site, the Jordan Archaeological Museum, has well-preserved objects from 3,000-6,000 years BCE. Seriously. There is some really old stuff in Jordan, and a lot of the Citadel (along with many other areas) hasn't even been excavated yet.



The Citadel has been occupied by many different civilizations throughout history. One of the most notable occupations was by the Greeks in 331 BCE because they named the city Philadelphia. It was the first Philadelphia.

The major buildings at the Citadel are the Temple of Hercules, a Byzantine church, and the Umayyad Palace. The Temple of Hercules is pretty impressive - pictures below with Martin in the first one for perspective. The second picture shows the remains of a hand and elbow from a 13-meter tall statue of Hercules that used to stand there.







The church was built over with a domed audience hall when the palace was built in the 8th century (the roof of the audience hall was recently redone):





Some ruins of the palace with the domed hall in the background. It was built around 720CE and demolished by an earthquake around 750CE so it didn't last long.



Some of the most impressive things about the Citadel are the views of Amman you get from it.











Martin was obsessed with the huge flags in Jordan.  There was one in Aqaba, and then this one (below) in Amman.  The flagpole is 130 meters tall and the flag itself is 30 meters long.  It's the 7th tallest free-standing flagpole in the world, currently.  The tallest stands at 170 meters and is in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

 

The Amman amphitheater is also visible from the Citadel:

We headed down there next on our tour.

Martin waiting for a show to start:

After hanging out at the Amphitheater for a bit and checking out the Folklore museum there (a bunch of dolls showing traditional Jordanian life and dress, I felt we had already learned most things we saw in there so I wasn't super impressed), we got to wander around downtown Amman on our own for a bit.  The shopping area of an Arab city is called the "souk", so we were wandering in the souk.  There were shops lining both sides of the street, and side streets were also filled with stalls.  Locals were wandering around the shops and buying whatever they needed.  Families tend to be big in Jordan so people shop at the cheap shops where everything is made in China in order to be able to afford everything they need.  These are the shops that are in the souk in Amman.  The shop owners actually play recordings nonstop that yell at people in Arabic about the deals in their stores.

Due to tourism being almost nonexistent in Jordan right now, we were the only tourists wandering around the shops of downtown Amman at this time.  We happened upon a big produce market filled with fresh fruits and vegetables and got several surprised looks from the vendors but most importantly all we heard while we walked through there was "Welcome!"  or "You are welcome", which is what every Jordanian said to us everywhere in Jordan and it really makes you feel like you're welcome and appreciated.  I can't describe how nice it was to talk to random people on the streets, people would just stop and ask us where we were from, we'd respond "America", and they'd respond "You are welcome" or "Welcome to Jordan", always in a warm and heartfelt way.  Even when I was wandering around the Amman airport right when we arrived trying to figure out how to transfer to our flight to Aqaba, which was rocket science by the way, I asked a security guard where to go and he told me then he smiled and said "Is this your first time here?  Welcome to Jordan."  Loved it.

Anyway, I only took one picture in the souk and it doesn't really capture anything about it, but here it is:

After our wander we stopped for some tea and coffee at Jafra, which was a nice coffee-and-shisha shop.  Since about 85% of Jordanians are Muslims who don't drink alcohol, they smoke instead and cafes are filled with people drinking coffee or smoothies while they smoke shisha.

After tea/coffee, our driver Firas drove us by some hole in the wall that he said served the best Shawarma where he bought us lunch (it was pretty good):

Then we went wine tasting at The Winemaker.  There are two wineries in Jordan - Zumot and Haddad, which make the Saint George and Mt Nebo labels, respectively.  The Winemaker, owned by Zumot, only carried Saint George, but it was enough.  Saint George has a TON of different wines.  We weren't impressed with any of the white wines but liked the Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon and would have bought a case or two but the winery doesn't ship so we could only buy what we could carry home with us in our luggage.

It's possible that the wine drunk at the last supper came from northern Jordan, but any ancient grape varieties have been lost and many of the grapes used for wine today have been imported from France.



Wine tasting made us hungry, so we headed back to our hotel, the Al Qasr Metropole Hotel, for dinner.  At the top of the hotel is the Vinaigrette restaurant, which has a great view and serves sushi.  So we helped ourselves to some of that.  And some more St George merlot.  :)




That was the end of our sightseeing day in Amman.

The Al Qasr was a great hotel to use as our home base but there weren't many restaurants in the area and we never felt like taking a cab downtown after sightseeing all day.  Vinaigrette, in the hotel, is a little pricey to eat at every night but it certainly had good food.  There was also a lounge on the first floor where you could order some simpler foods like pizzas and we ate there one night as well.

One night we didn't even need dinner because Firas bought us so much food throughout the afternoon.  We had happened to drive through his hometown (Ajlun) and he stopped and bought us flat bread fresh out of the oven - burning hot - and labaneh, which is a yogurt made from sheep's milk.  Then we spent the rest of our car ride back to Amman eating that (the best comparison I can make is that it was like a fresh bagel with cream cheese, but minus the sugar in the cream cheese).  He also stopped at a roadside stand and bought us some fruit to try - green cherries and some orange fruit I don't remember the name of.  The green cherries are fully ripe - they never turn red.  They were still crunchy and sour though.  Firas said they eat them with salt.  The orange fruit was soft and sweet and good.

After eating too much bread and labaneh, we went to the Royal Automobile Museum in Amman.  This museum is where the late King Hussein's car collection is showcased, to share his love of cars with the public.  Below are a few pictures from that.  I'm not a car person so this wasn't super impressive to me but there were a lot of cars in there.

 

Then, of course, we ate again!  Firas took us to a falafel place where he made me get not only a falafel-in-a-pita sandwich, but also a box with 10 falafel balls in it, fresh out of the vat of oil they were deep fried in.  I couldn't even finish half the sandwich and only ate half of the falafel balls as well.  But it was all SO. GOOD.  I would go back to Jordan just for the food.