Saturday March 3rd, 2018
The first day is just for the flights to Amman. The flight leaves from Milan at 13.00, change in Rome (less than 1 hour, it was really too few, I had to run to get on time at the gate for the second flight), and in the evening in Amman. We are 21 people in our group. At the airport we meet a guy that takes care of the visas procedures and so we can skip the queue (it was pretty long). Outside the airport there are some cars that drive us to our hotels. In my hotel, we are just 4 people from the group. We have dinner at the hotel, and then we go to sleep. We will have to wake up early the next day.
Sunday March 4th, 2018
Today will be one of the longest day as kilometres. We meet our guide (italian speaking) that will be with us for the whole tour. The first stop is Umm-Ar-Rasas, ruins of Roman and Byzantine periods. There are 4 churches with perfectly preserved mosaics. Some of them (especially those in St. Stephen’s church) are covered by a roof and can be observed in their full size. Others are still under the sand.
We go on to Wadi Rum, the desert with red colours. Before the tour of it, we stop near the entrance to have a lunch under a tent. Our guide goes pretty slow, so we miss the jeeps and have to wait for the next departure. We split in 5-6 people on each jeep and go to 3 spots inside the Wadi Rum. The first one is a rock arch, pretty small, where you can walk over it. Walking on it is worth only if someone takes you a pic over there, otherwise there is nothing special to see over there. Then we reach a canyon, inhabitated in the past by Nabateans. Inside the canyon it’s possible to see some engravings and some water pool.
There is more water than usual, so we cannot reach the last pool (we should walk inside the water), so we don’t go there. At last we stop near a sand dune, where it’s possible to go up. Our guide gives us really short time there (it’s a pity), so we have to run to climb up the dune and see the landscape at the sunset. We are late (more or less we will be late on the schedule for the whole week). In the evening we reach our hotel in Petra and we have to go to dinner immediately because the time for it, it’s almost over.
We had a lot of problems with the hotels during the trip. In this one, Movenpick (it should be 4-stars), wifi is not working, so they cannot activate the room cards. Every time we need to go to our room, we have to go to the reception and call someone to open the door for us (also the phones in the rooms aren’t working). It’s really uncomfortable, but we hope everything will be fixed by the next morning.
Monday March 5th, 2018
There are still problems with wifi and room cards. We will spend the whole day in Petra. Petra is probably the best site in Jordan. I would say a trip to Jordan is worth for Petra. In the morning we meet the other part of our group and the guide and we start discovering Petra. We walk along the siq till the Treasures, stopping a lot of times. After the explanation in front of the Treasure, we split from the group. It’s more or less 10am. We start walking along the main street, stopping at the various buildings, like the Theatre, the Great Temple, the Temple of Dushares (we have our paper guides, so we can read info on them).
At the end of the street, we start climbing the 800 steps to the Monastery (on the way up, we take a little detour to the Lion Triclinium). They seem a lot, but we reach the top pretty easily. After a short break and some pics we go down to the restaurant, where we meet with our group for the lunch. Those who followed the guide, saw the main street and the royal tombs in the morning. Later, who wants, will go up to the Monastery.
After lunch we split again from the group and start what we really wanted to see: the High-Altar-of-Sacrifice-Trail. This trail is really interesting, it starts from the Temple of Dushares, goes up the mountains, and back down near the Theater. It allows you to see the whole valley from above, and see some other tombs. On the trail there is almost nobody. While we go up we see there are many other buildings in the valley behind.
We see just those on the trail: the Painted Triclinium, the Roman Soldier Tomb, the Garden Triclinium and the Lion Monument. All of them are really nice and worth a visit. At the top there are 2 obelisks and the Altar of Sacrifice. The landscape is beautiful. We start to go down (the steps/trail seem to be a bit steep, so maybe it would be more tiring to do the trail in the opposite way). We must be at the entrance at 5pm, so we have to give up some things, we cannot see all we wanted.
When we are back on the main street we go to the Royal Tombs (here there would be a trail that goes up the mountain and offers a nice view over the Treasury, but it would be impossible to do in so short time). We see the Urn Tomb, the Silk Tomb, the Corinthian Tomb and the Palace Tomb. At a short distance there is also the Sextius Florentinus Tomb. Our time is almost over, so again back to the main street, to the Treasure and thorugh the Siq till the entrance (we walk really fast to be there on time). We arrive more or less together with the other people of our group.
It was surely a challenging walk (we had to walk fast coz of the limited time we had), but surely interesting and worth. We go back to the hotel. Here we find there are still problems with wifi (they promise to solve it in few minutes, we don’t trust them, after 24 hours not working). After half an hour at the reception complaining about it (anyway it wasn’t fixed in few minutes), at the end they move us to Marriott.
After dinner we go (just some of us) to see “Petra by night”: they put some candles in the Siq till the Treasure, where there is a little show with typical music. During the show the Treasure is enlighted just by candles, at the end, they turn on some lights. Nice atmosphere.
Tuesday March 6th, 2018
Today we visit Litte Petra, as the name says, it’s pretty small. At the end of the site, there would be a ladder, with some signs promising the “best view of the world”, but our guide doesn’t give us time to go up. What a pity. Back to the bus we stop few minutes to Shobak to see the castle at distance (we don’t visit it and we don’t even go near). Then we descend to the Dead Sea.
After lunch we have half day free for some fun in the Dead Sea and in the resort. There should be an excursion to Bethania but our guide doesn’t offer us this option. So we must stay there (there is nothing else around, we cannot go anywhere else than the resort.
Wednesday March 7th, 2018
In the morning we go to Mount Nebo, but before we stop at a shop and we are forced to listen to an explanation of various products. Really boring and a waste of time. At Mount Nebo we visit the church with some nice mosaics and the little museum. Later we go to Madaba, to see the St. George’s church with the Palestine mosaic map. We have lunch in a nearby restaurant and then we go back to Amman.
Here we visit the citadel with the roman ruins, and then we go down to the Theatre. There are some preparations for a band concert, we can enter it but we cannot go up to the top. Then we are taken to see the Souk. Later we are back to the hotel. Also here we have problems: dirty rooms, not working air conditioner (outside it was +25°/30° and the heater was on!). Another bad experience with the hotel. But this time they don’t change it to use (and the director of the hotel doesn’t show). They just ignored our compliants.
Thursday March 8th, 2018
Today we have a free day, with an optional trip to desert castles. As there is nothing much to see in Amman, we go for the trip (pretty expensive). We see Qasr Al-Harrana, Qusayr’Amra and Qasr Al Azraq.
Back to Amman in the afternoon pretty early. We don’t know what to do, so we go to a shopping center where we spend the rest of the afternoon and we get dinner. Tonight the rooms seem to be a bit better, they cleaned them a bit (they are not “clean”, but better than the day before), the air conditionner is working.
Friday March 9th, 2018
In the morning we go to Gadara to see roman ruins. Here we just go to the view point to see the lake Tiberiad from above, but we are not allowed to go around the site to see all the buildings (e.g. there would be a street with many columns but we can see it only from the distance). We stop in Ajloun to visit the castle. Also here we don’t have much time, so short visit and then to the restaurant.
There are too many people, we have to wait a lot before being able to reach the buffet. Planned in a really bad way. In the afternoon we reach Jerash, the most important roman city in Jordan, with many columns well preserved, and some buildings. We spend here the afternoon, before getting back to Amman for the last dinner all together.
Saturday March 10th, 2018
They take us to the airport. Also here we get a bad experience with the staff taking stuff from our luggages (the checked-in ones) with no reason. Very rude and not professional from them. And in the afternoon we are back at home.
I liked Petra and Wadi Rum, some other places were nice, but not so special, and didn’t really like the hotels (due to all the problems) and the people. My suggestion for Jordan is to go there just for Petra and Wadi Rum (a long weekend could be enough).
