For Christmas, Casey and I met up with my cousin Ly in Jordan, rented a car, and toured the country. We all mistook the coldness of the desert nights, which may explain why nearly every picture involves us in the same clothing, but the days were warm enough.Before Ly arrived, Casey and I had four days around the capital Amman. We had planned on travelling via Syria, but the visa wait was too long. So we flew less than an hour to a place visibly more Middle-Eastern. Despite the ever-present English, people dressed more traditionally and conservatively than our Beirutian counterparts. Plus there's the sand, the endless expanse of sand!
I had a fever the first day, probably a result of having been soaked by rain while running the previous day back in Beirut, but after convalescing, on Christmas Eve, we took a bus to Jerash in the cold wind and rain. Just look how much it rained!The remains are Roman, and easily the largest collection we'd seen. The guidebook recommended three hours merely to walk to all of it!
And then we ended up in a chariot:
A guy approached us when we entered the arena for the chariot race (what Casey was doing while avoiding the puddles above) and asked if we wanted to see the horses. A few years ago they had actually started holding chariot races for the tourists, breaking some 1500 consecutive years that the arena had gone unused. He pointed to the tracks as he led us in broken English to the stables.
A guy approached us when we entered the arena for the chariot race (what Casey was doing while avoiding the puddles above) and asked if we wanted to see the horses. A few years ago they had actually started holding chariot races for the tourists, breaking some 1500 consecutive years that the arena had gone unused. He pointed to the tracks as he led us in broken English to the stables.He insisted on taking our pictures, explaining the differences between breeds of horses, and the relationship between them--mothers, fathers, and children.
And so, if you can count going around in a circle for a minute, I rode a horse for the first time in my life. And this was before we even entered the main grounds! It was quite memorable.
The first picture in the post is from this place too, and above shows a little bit the vastness of it.We explored the grounds and discovered some Jordanian bagpipers playing in one of the amphitheaters, apparently to test the phenomenal acoustics. It was an unusual site to witness!
I uploaded it, although there's probably better ones out there!
Why wouldn't Jordanian bagpipers appear at Roman ruins?
On our way out, we were greeted by another type of beauty:
It certainly was a unique way to spend Christmas Eve.