Amman, Jordan

Walking up Citadel Hill in Amman, Jordan.

When I first thought of Jordan I thought of a desert with sand dunes and not many houses, but really Jordan’s deserts are mountainous and rocky with lots of bushes and shrubs. Amman, the capital, is huge and bright with lights. Most of the population lives here. There are mosques on about every street which have singing prayer calls 5 times a day.

The downtown market is full of life with colorful and tasty fruits, vegetables and treats. When we were there a small brawl broke out but Yamaan, our guide, said that doesn’t always happen except on Friday afternoons which is their holy day and there are protests sometimes downtown. The shops have anything you want and at really cheap prices!

There are 30 roman theatres in the whole world and 14 are in Jordan. The roman structures in Jordan are beautiful and really well preserved. Yamaan toured us through the Citadel which is an active archeological site that has uncovered many civilizations from Roman to early Islamic. There were many different groups who lived here over the years like the Ammonites (1200 BC), King David (900 BC), Assyria (8th century BC), Babylonia (6th centuryBC), the Ptolemies, the Seleucids (3rd century BC), Rome (1st century BC), and the Umayyads (7th century AD) when it became part of Arabia. Lots of history! The whole site was left in ruins until recently when other countries came and put money into restoring it.

Jordan is a great country, I only have explored part of its main city Amman and I still have a lot of other exploring to do like seeing Petra! A whole adventure awaits me.

Christopher

Here is a slideshow of our first day in Amman:

Watch this slideshow with captions on flickr.