Monday Feb 6Th - Amman to Petra

 An 8:15 departure found us heading south from Amman with a few stops planned before our arrival in Petra this evening. 
The first was the town of Madaba, famous for the many mosaics that were uncovered there in the ruins of several churches. Our primary stop was the Church of St George, the home of the oldest known mosaic map in the world. Somewhat inaccurate by modern standards, it did provide an approximate guide to the locations of the river Jordan and the major towns mentioned  in early Biblical Times



From there we travelled a relatively short distance to Mount Nebo, which overlooks the Dead Sea and affords views extending into Jerusalem. Believed to be the place referenced in the Bible where Moses was offered a glimpse of the Promised Land by God before he died, it has been drastically modernized with the original church renovated to provide a very modern place of worship featuring a couple of dozen of the original mosaics from the old church.






   





    Returning to the main road South we stopped briefly at a craft warehouse where we watched local artists training in the skills of designing and making mosaics from cut up pieces of stone that had been acquired from various local vendors- mostly broken pieces of left over from countertop construction

Ranging in price up to several thousand dollars, with even small pieces going for upwards of $150-200 they proved unaffordable.



Our final stop was Shobak Castle, built around 1120 AD by the Crusaders. Largely in ruins it is located on an overlook which allowed them to control much of the surrounding land. Destroyed and rebuilt over several centuries, a visit within the grounds proved to be too difficult due to wind gusts up to 130kph and temperatures barely above zero, so we settled for a distant view in a nearby coffee shop, enjoying a cup of Turkish style coffee. ( Imagine caffeinated mud!)





From the castle, it took just over an hour to reach the town of Petra, where our group was dropped off at various hotels, ours being the last, right in the centre of the town of Wadi Musa, some 4km from the main entrance to Petra. A planned night visit was cancelled due to extreme cold so we opted for an early dinner while we watched the news of this mornings devastating quake in nearby Syria and Turkey.








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Few Quick Notes on this blog

Hi Folks,                  If you are reading this you are looking at my first attempt to set up a permanent Blog rather than the temporary ones that I typically set up prior to our trips.    At this point I am still editing and making changes to the settings and layout, so it's not looking quite the way I want at this point.     If you click on the bars on the left hand side at the top of the page you will find links to my previous travel blogs including my first attempt " Birth Control Pills ........." which may also include some none travel related subjects.   Time permitting I will start adding further links to other sites and I hope that I can start adding photographs of the various places we have visited. This is not always possible since internet speeds in many locations are exceptionally slow and images can take a considerable amount of time to upload.  With the upcoming changes to Google that have b...
Read more

Hotter at home!

Image
When we left Puerto Plata the noon temperature was 26. When we arrived in Toronto at 6pm it was 28.          But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.  The “ city tour” was about all I expected it to be. Our first stop was at a rum factory for a “tasting” at 9:30am. The brand wasn’t one I was familiar with : Ron Macorix. Mostly white rum mixed with various fruits or coconut, I took a pass once I sampled their premium brand- I would imagine if you drank the pee of a mule with diabetes…..! From there we travelled through town to visit San Felipe Fort, more like a bastion than an actual fortress it sits at the mouth of the San Marco river thus protecting both the river access and the adjacent seafront. I managed to smack my head twice on extremely low doorways - the folks that built it must have topped out at 5 ft. A small museum featured cannon balls and various other artifacts and rusted objects, presumably found during exploration of the site.  From th...
Read more

Milan

Image
In retrospect we possibly could have shortened our trip to Milan by one day, but there is a large shopping area that we have barely touched so we will probably do that tomorrow.  We started our visit with the most obvious spot, the Cathedral. Located in a large Piazza it must’ve one of the largest in Italy, if not Europe. We restricted our visit to the main body of the building and the archeology site in the basement ,the actual museum being closed on the day of our visit. They did offer an elevator ride or stair climb to the rooftop. However wehave seen more than enough panoramic views of many European cities. How different could this one be.   During the next 3 days we covered a variety of sights including Storza Castle with its sweeping gardens and three floors of very impressive museums.  A visit to the Museum of Science and Technology gave us a view of several models of Leonardo da Vinci models based on his actual plans. It also featured a l...
Read more