A few summer days in Amman

 The weather's much more manageable here in Jordan (than Oman) but it's still pretty warm. Two days ago, Rob and I slept in late as he arrived at 3:30am. We headed out to visit Amman's Roman amphitheatre and the citadel. The amphitheater is about five minutes walk from our hotel, if that, and nestled right next to a main highway.

 After we slogged to the top of the amphitheater for the obligatory top-down shot, we walked up the opposite hill to see the citadel. The view of Amman is amazing! The city was originally built on seven hills, but has spread to 19 now. Amman has been inhabited for a very long time, and was known as Philadelphia in the Roman era. You can see the layers of the city as you walk through the streets: it has been built and rebuilt, and remains in the process of becoming as new buildings emerge and old ones crumble.

 At the citadel, there is also a small archaeological museum with relics from the site dating back to the Stone Age (gives 'historical' a whole new meaning). There was also a pretty bizarre jewelry display (see below: Rob asked, "Liz Taylor?").

 The view looking down into 'al-balad' (as the downtown area is called) is pretty incredible, and you can see the highway and the amphitheater again.

Later that night, we tried out the Wild Jordan Cafe for dinner. We ate a delicious healthy meal on their patio, overlooking the city spread out beneath us.

Above, you can see the citadel illuminated at night. It's gorgeous, but belies the many many hills of Amman we climbed...it was an exhausting day. We learned some important things, though: everything is negotiable. Never accept the first offer, and never pay more than 500 fils for a big bottle of water. Always ask the driver to restart the meter on the cab, cause he won't do it on his own. Even when you speak to Jordanian cabbies in Arabic, they will still try to take you for a ride, and you have to yell at them when they take you the opposite direction of your hotel just to get the meter up a bit. It's really tiring to constantly haggle prices and fight down superinflated prices ($3 for a can of Coke, for example). In this respect, I miss Oman: Omanis don't care about taking foreigners' money. They are scrupulously honest, and will hand money back to you if you overpay.

Yesterday, we headed to Darat al Funun, basically because Rob is being very generous about putting up with a few research items that have ended up on our itinerary. Darat is one of the first art centers in the Middle East, and has been a pioneer, so I couldn't pass up the chance to check it out. This place is a sanctuary: a series of three buildings amongst Roman ruins and lush gardens terracing down the hillside. It is quite the breath of fresh air from the busy tumult of Ammani streets.

After Darat, we headed to the Jordanian National Gallery in Jebel Weibdeh. We walked (again) and it was quite the long walk, but worth it once we found it, nestled in two buildings adjacent to an art park. The collection was lovely - unfortunately, we are missing the opening of their 70 years of Jordanian artists exhibition that is coming up soon.

Last night, we went to Beit Sitti for Jordanian cooking classes. Turns out Beit Sitti is basically right behind Darat al Funun, which would have made us pretty cranky except we took a taxi there this time! On the menu: cucumber salad, mutabel, matloubeh, and osmaliyeh (a kunafeh-y dessert). We started our lesson with Laure, and she talked us through their spices, including turmeric, sumac, garlic, parsley, mint and tahini.

Our "kitchen" was outside on the patio, overlooking the hillsides of Amman, and we chopped and minced at Laure's direction. We even made our own pita bread. Everything was so simple, and she used spoons and cups but no official measurements. You can see the stove and oven in the back, above, where we cooked the matloubeh, the eggplant for the mutabel, and the pita.

Happy chefs!

Here is Rob after Laur said, "You should do something! She is doing everything!" So we documented his labors (to be fair, he did cook quite well).

The final meal was delicious: at the top left, you can see our cucumber salad (with mint making the starfish pattern), the pita under the napkin on the top right, the matloubeh (upside down dish: with chicken and rice, cooked in one pot and then flipped), and the mutabel on the bottom left. It was so incredibly delicious, and we ate more than we should have but didn't regret a bite.

Afterwards, Laur gave us a ride over to Jebel Amman and we enjoyed a brief 'argileh (shisha) and lemon-mint juice before hitting the sack so we could get up for Jerash in the morning.