The alarm went off early, the guide wanted us to leave the hotel by eight so that we would be in Petra by ten. This was a bit confusing since it only took about 30 minutes to walk from the hotel to the treasury of Petra last night. The guide had done this tour before and was a better judge of people in groups than yours truly.

Walking down the siq, the narrow valley before getting into Petra, was a sight itself but seing the treasury carved out of stone appear out of nowhere was truly an experience. The guide knew his stuff and apparently this place had been in control by quite a few different groups throughout history. The whole city was considered sacred and the carved out buildings where thought to be a home after death to the rich and famous of that time.

Apart from the dwelling of the deceased the place provided some awesome sceneries, especially at the top of the city some 90 minutes and thousand steps up. After snapping more photos than needed and some rest we started to head back. We were supposed to meet back at the hotel at 1530 and while we saw this might be tight we were by far not the last. An hour after agreed time we left Petra with a guide thanking the punctual group.
Next stop was Wadi Rum, the place where Lawrence of Arabia lived most of his time here and a nice desolate desert in general. We took a 4-wheel drive out to a conveniently climbable sand dune to watch the sunset. Muy nice, especially since the full moon rose at the same time in the other direction.

After a bedouin dinner at a camp and some attempts to dance to the local music we went off to bed. After a few minutes we thought that it would be nicer to watch the stars and sleep outside. Said and done, it would be a short night since tomorrow Mirsada and myself had signed up for a balloon ride at 0600.

After a long and healthy night in Jerusalem Hotel we woke up ready for the wedding tour. The breakfast buffet had more western alternatives that I took just to be sure that my stomach would behave. After greeting some of the other guests we got on the bus.

The very first stop was at a supermarket to stock up cookies and chips and such, I was very pleased to find that my old love from US Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo was to be found, a cooled Star Bucks vanilla frappuccino. Here flanked by another addiction at the time, Skittles. I really should find a shop that has these in Gothenburg. A six pack of Mountain Dew would also fill out the empty space in my fridge quite well.

The first real stop was Madaba, famous for its mosaic and especially a 25×5 meters map over the surrounding countries. It was quite detailed and impressive for being done in the 6th century. A few “Yalla Yalla” later and we were off to the next stop, Mount Nebo.

Mount Nebo is supposed to be where Moses is buried and early christians had built a church to revere the site in late 4th century. The site has a really nice panorama over “the holy land” and one should be able to see Jerusalem and Jericho from here but it was hard when we were there.

Next stop was Petra, or to be precise Crown Plaza in Petra. A very nice Hotel with a very nice buffet. Unfortunately we were on a schedule if we wanted to see Petra by night so in the middle of a interesting conversation with another guest we had to leave. Petra by night was fair enough, but I took Mirsada’s word that it would be more impressive in daylight, despite the lack of live bedouin music performances. Back to the nice hotel for some 6 hours sleep before checking out tomorrow morning.

A few highlights in before ending up in Amman would be the Taxi-driver refusing to drop us at correct terminal or the flight not mentioned on the departure-screens. Well at the airport in Amman when standing in the line to get some Jordanian Dinars a guy with our names on a sign sneak up on us.

It was nice to just follow the guy through security (how and why he had gotten into the secure area to pick us up I have no idea), get into a car and being given a room, without suspecting getting ripped off for a change. We met Hamzeh and Irina briefly and decided to join them for lunch later.

Since we managed to just miss the breakfast we tried the room service and ordered two american breakfasts. Three (I kid you not) correcting calls later we got more breakfast than we could eat. This didn’t help much since the food passed through my body within 20 minutes, bah. We took a raincheck on the lunch in favor to rest.

After an unsuccessful attempt to use the internet at the hotel (their IT-manager knew less than me and could not get it working) we found an internet café in a mall. I could now finish uploading the blog which I’d started in Damascus, or I could partly overwrite the old one leaving myself with a broken blog. Easy choice apparently.

After dinner at the hotel we concluded our senior citizen style day by some reading and blog-writing before going to bed. Unless this trend stops we will be solving cross-words together any day now.