Amman, Dead Sea and Bethany

29 November 2009 Sunday

Breakfast on the lower floor with 4 floors of balconies above with hanging plants – the hanging gardens of Babylon. Then load on yellow bus and head for the city tour starting with the Citadel the highest of the 7 hills on which Aman ws originally bilt- now city incorporates 22 hills and most of the buildings rbuilt or white stone so the name "white city". The Citadel occupied from the stone age onward with Greco-Roman ruins, a Byzantine palace and a Ummayid mosque- Then we visit the national archeologic museum- small, but examples of all the eras. There’s also a beautiful viww of the city and we overlook a Roman amohitheater. They are reconstructing the path that lead from the citadel Temple of Hercules to the theater- which is our next stop- two free museums in the area showed hadicrafts and history and then we are off to see ‘Mount Nebo' as the local guide, Jafar, feeds us some food from the market. It’s about an hour drive through very hilly country on the King's highway present from the time of Moses. Cool and windy on the mountain andd low visibility makes for poor viewing of the Promised Land, but Jericho visible but not Jerusalem. Also the Church with it’s fine mosaics is under restoration – so after visiting the monuments left by John Paul II it’s back on the bus. Then it’s down to a Dead Sea restauraaant where I had esophegeal spasm and skipped the mud bath or floating in the Dead sea (10x saltier than Sakt Lake and 100x the ocean) Took the optional tour to Bethany on the Jordan where recent archeology established approximate location of Jesus’s baptismal site walked down to the very narrow grey Jordan River and looked over to Isreal-which had erected a large terraced white sereies of building to commemorate the spot or just make the Arabs look cheesy- on the Jordan side there is a nice new Orthodox church which was closed