On Saturday we went to Jerash, an amazingly intact set of ruins to the North of Amman. On the Middle East trail, we have come to realize it is easy to get ruin-ed, moqu-ed, and castl-ed out, much like it is to get cathedral-ed out in Europe and templ-ed out in Asia. However, that does not stop us from going! While you see a lot of columns, each city is quite unique in its own right and it is cool to see the differences between them. Jerash was one of the best preserved cities I have been to and apparently 90% has not even been excavated yet. It has two impressive entry arches, a hippodrome, two theaters, two temples, two main streets with colonnades, and a lot in between.
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| Hadrian's arch |
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| Circular forum |
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| Colonnades |
More fun than the actual ruins, however, was getting there. While Jordan is one of the most Western-friendly countries in the region and definitely one of the most popular with tourists (due to perceived safety and Petra), it is quite difficult to travel independently here. Ironically, Syria was insanely easy. We could hop on any bus or microbus and get to just about anywhere we wanted to go in Syria. However, in Jordan, they are more used to tourists and expect them to take insanely priced private tours arranged by hotels (or travel around by tour group).
Since buses are also way more irregular here, we finally negotiated a much cheaper taxi at the bus station to get there. Another surprising note on Jordan is that we have heard much more reports from female travellers about harassment (in the souks of Amman) and at the Dead Sea. We, so far, have had no problems but it is quite surprising because we expected to receive the least attention in Jordan! One more bonus point for Syria...
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