Post Pandemic Petra and Pyramids

Today was spent doing a city tour of Amman.  After another grand breakfast (it's hard to get used to meals served buffet style again), we had a much earlier start at 9:00 instead of noon. But then we went to bed at 8:00 p.m. instead of 6:00 a.m.! We began at the Citadel, where there is evidence of habitation from as far back as the Neolithic Period and is considered to be one of the world's longest continually inhabited sites.  The major remains are the Temple of Hercules, a Byzantine church, and the Umayyad Palace- interesting that each major era has a significant presence. The Citadel is located on one of the seven hills of Amman. entrance to the Citadel with Temple of Hercules in the background ruins at the Citadel with modern Amman  Roman theatre from the Citadel temple of Hercules  in  the Jordan Archeological Museum We also visited the Roman Theatre at the foot of the hill opposite the Citadel. It had a capacity of 6000 Romans- but they must have sat ...

Because of our late arrival, our driver and new best friend Akram suggested that we reorganize our itinerary a bit so that we could get some rest before our first day of touring.  After a deep sleep of about three hours, we got up, had breakfast, and were ready to go. Akram drove us about an hour away from Amman to Jerash, his home town.   We walked around and learned a little bit about about the ancient Roman ruins of Jera, with its beautiful colannades, the temples of Zeus and Artemis, and the hippodrome where chariots used to race. at Hadrian's Arch (That Hadrian really got around!) the colonades at the ruins of Jera The ruins date from the 1st to 2nd century.   The local guide showed us how the extension of a bell can be inserted between the pieces of the colonades. If you push on the piece above the bell, it will sway slightly and the bell will ring. This is seismic engineering- it is why many of the colonades still stand despite the many earthquakes throughout...

 It's a very good thing that we liked the lounge, as our six hour layover evolved into something significantly longer. Our plane to London had mechanical issues, so another plane was brought in. Instead of leaving at 6:20 p.m., the flight was delayed to 7:50, which meant our time to connect in Heathrow would be a little tight. However, instead of leaving at 7:50, it was further delayed to 10:30, which meant we had no chance to get on our flight to Amman. We thought we would call Air Canada so that we had some say in the rebooking process. After waiting on hold for two hours, I was finally able to talk to an agent. Sadly, no matter what she tried, she was unable to "uncheck" us from the London to Amman segment because it was operated by British Airways. So, we had to trust that when we got off the plane at Heathrow, all would be well. It was a big ask. It finally came time to get on the plane but when our boarding passes were scanned, we were reissued with ones that said ...

  We began talking about going to Egypt in 2018 and made some preliminary enquiries. However, the flights were expensive and circuitous, so we made our first postponement. In 2019, routes changed and so we once again began planning our trip. We added Jordan to our explorations and found a great travel agent there with whom we worked to customize our travels. After a hundred emails or so, we had the itinerary nailed down, the hotels chosen, the tours organized, and so we paid our deposit for a trip in 2020. We all know what happened to travel in 2020!  After many extensions of our deposit, we decided it was time to go on an adventure again, and so we are now on our way.  Yesterday, the forecast for Victoria wasn't great- storm warnings for some snow and significant winds made me worry that we might not make it to Vancouver to connect to London. (We have memories of an adventure/stressed filled trip from Victoria to the Vancouver airport in a snow storm when we went to Viet...