Dead Sea!!

Louise and I enjoying dinner in Olympos, Turkey

Amman is not a terrifically spectacular city, but I think it will live forever in Louise and my mind's as an amazing place, simply because of the generosity of the Ibbini family. They were some of the kindest people we met. They invited us over for a family lunch at their home on Friday, where they made a traditional Jordanian meal called mensaf. It was absolutely delicious...rice with pine nuts and boiled lamb (intact head and all;) placed on top, and then a yummy warm yoghurt sauce on top. It was sooo good. We also had some cardammon tea afterwards along with some delicious kanafa. We chatted with their family for awhile and got to know some of Ahmed's brothers and sisters (12 kids in all) and their families.

Ahmed and mensaf

After lunch, Moayad, one of Ahmed's nephews, offered to show us around town. We spent til midnight driving around with him and his friend Yanal. It was great and we got to see much more of Amman, since you really need a car to get around town. He took us to Mecca Mall, a huge shopping mall pretty comparable to the states, and one of his friends took pictures of us in the mall, which was pretty crazy and a bit odd. (you get some odd looks when you're taking a bunch of pictures of yourself in a mall;) He then drove us to his university and we grabbed coffee while he met with some of his friends for a club he's in. Shopping seems to be the thing to do in Amman, at least this time of year, because we stopped at another outdoor pedestrian street lined with shops and then headed to yet another huge shopping mall to watch a movie (Enchanted). We then tasted some popular food called zataar (?) which is a thin bread wrap filled with different things....I had it filled with yoghurt and some smushed eggplant and it was really good. Amman is not the prettiest town, nor the best layout, but they certainly have a lot of things for entertainment and you can get pretty much everything you can in the states. I think the thing that I disliked the most about it was simply the climate....its so dry there that there is little to no greenery and instead of plants around buildings, there is just clumps of rocks and dirt. However, the people are super nice though and more than make up for what the surroundings lack. A funny thing we found out is that Jordanians tend to have more than one cell phone....and we're not talking two or three....some of them have as many as 8 different cell phones! they have to have the newest and best model and often times they have cell phones with different providers to talk to different friends. And it's not like its cheap...apparently, on average, they spend an outrageous amount of money on cell phones.

Louise and Noor floating in the Dead Sea

salt in the dead sea

The next day the Ibbini family generously invited us to go to the Dead Sea with them. It was a spectacular day....even the weather was terrific..in the 70s and sunny plus the sea was pretty warm. Ahmed is the director in charge of the Dead Sea area, so I think we got a bit of special treatment;) There was a nice beach, with an area with two swimming pools, tables and chairs if you didn't want to swim in the sea. Headed straight away to the sea though, which was pretty wicked. It is downright ridiculous how much salt is in it....salt ppt floating at the surface, salt crystals on rocks on the bottom, and layers of separated salt and sand composing the bottom. It stung like crazy if you got it in your eyes and tasted nasty. You float so high in it that it is difficult to swim. We went way out without hardly any effort. We also put some of the mud from the bottom all over us, let it dried, and then rubbed it off. It is supposed to be amazing for your skin, and indeed it felt amazing. My skin was so soft and clean afterwards, felt almost like leaving a hammum. Looked pretty funny probably though with all this brown dirt dried on me;)

We ate pretty well in Amman, which was probably good for us after all the street vendors in Turkey;) My personal favorite though was the juice stands in Amman which gave delicious fresh squeezed juices. mmmm, wish we had that back in mn;) We also bought some super cheap and pretty good quality movies...1 lyra each (~$1.20). Spent a few hours waiting around for a bus to wadi musa (petra) and had quite an experience there. We were sitting on the sidewalk waiting for the bus when a group of little 10 year old hooligans came buy and one got shoved into me. They walked off laughing and then came back a few min later and they were showing me that they were playfully beating the kid up. They then commenced with saying the few english words they know, which primarily consisted of "fuck you." Louise did a good job and told them off, with the addition of a strict finger wave. Their mothers would be proud;) Anyhoo, getting on the bus was a fiasco....we had a bunch of men trying to drive us down in their taxis, for an exhorbitant price and finally the bus driver came by and kicked some guys out so we would have a spot. It was a crazy ride down in the packed minivan with horribly arabic music playing. Finally made it to wadi musa and ended up in valentin inn packed with fellow backpackers which was pretty crazy. There were a bunch of cool people and it seemed to be especially full of young jewish kids going to israel on birthright program (basically they all went for the free all expense paid trip) and it was cool to hear their view of things and refreshing to see that they could even sympathize with the palestinians and didn't agree with all that israel does. Anyhoo, tomorrow we're off to explore Petra!