After much excitement and planning and two years of Arabic by Calvin, we got on the plane and flew away. Other than no accidents it was the worst flight of my life, due to kids screaming, yelling, crying, hitting, and otherwise making scenes until 2 in the morning. I was impressed with their endurance however. But no real problems, we arrived in Amman and got a taxi to our hotel and decided to eat at our hotel. It was empty as far as we could tell, but when we asked if we could get food they turned on all the lights in a large dining room, and proceeded to cook for us – chicken soup, fatoush, green ssalad and mixed grill – good food for hungry travelers. Then we totally crashed. At 4 o’clock in the morning we heard the melodic call of the muezzin to wake people to eat before the beginning of the day- it is Ramadan. Then we heard him again at 4:30. Our breakfast at the hotel included olives, yogurt, eggs with vegetables, hard boiled eggs in salt, sausage and corn, chocolate cupcakes, sesame bread, pita and hummus, canned fruit, tang, nescafe, and tea.
We set off by taxi to downtown Amman to see the older parts of thr city, wandering around aimlessly for awhile, seeing the fruit market, and then hiking up a hill to the Temple of Hercules, the Ummayed Palace and a wonderful musuem with Dead Sea Scrolls and amazing statues and ancient artifacts – pretty amazing history (we have pictures but the web is so slow we’re not sure we can download them now).
We hiked down to the Roman theater, then hiked up to the top and through it, walked around the older smaller theater, and toured the museam of common people. At this point the heat was getting pretty intense. Almost all the cafes are closed for Ramadan, which means that not only are most of the cafes closed until night, but that it is rude to eat or drink in front of others (or smoke or have sex, but those weren’t issues for us). We found some water and sodas and drank them discretely. We caught a cab back to the hotel, inching along at times in horrendous traffic, and took naps instead of having lunch.
We took a cab to the City Mall in the late afternoon to see modern Amman, and did some people watching of the shoppers. In downtown we saw many more men than women, and mostly older people. At the mall we saw many more families, with grandmas, adult kids and little kids, as well as groups of guys and groups of young women, but not together. Even at the mall many of the stores were closed for Ramadan, and I don’t know if the people characteristics are different for that as well.
Overall most of the men wear clothes similiar to what we see in the States. with maybe 10% in distintly Arab clothes, including Bedouin outfits. However I’d estimate more than 3/4 of the women wear headdresses; most of the “older”women (over maybe 30 or 40) wear full loose neck to ankle coverings while more of the younger wear more fitted outfits, sometimes jeans, but usually covering neck to ankles, including arms to the wrists. Some of the headdresses are clearly high fashion, others sparley, while others plain black or white. We’ve seen a number of women in total black with face coverings with eye slits, and even some with no visable eye slits (although Calvin assures me there are eye slits). Sorry to sound PI, but it makes me uncomfortable – they look like dementors to me. We had a meal of good arab food (fatoosh, mixed grill, hummus, olives, yogurt) at the food court, where we could have had Burger King, KFC, Fish and Chips, Pizza Express or other fast foods, but what we had was quite good. We took a cab back, and while he couldn’t find the hotel for a long while -he stopped and talked to a stranger who talked on the phone with his friend, eventually got into the cab with us, and called the hotel for directions. Our map did not seem to help them much, but we are back now and ready to sleep.
What? You had fatoosh, mixed grill, hummus, olives, and yogurt instead of Burger King? What is this world coming to?
Sounds like you are having a wonderful time. I’m envious.
And for some reason this posting is time-stamped February 15th, 2010 when it was really made about August 30, 2010. Just for the record.
Great blog. And it does show transit and urban planning as the key things they are–a win/win for environment and humans.
I’m curious about fruit prices. Calvin, William, and I discussed in St. Petersburg and Warsaw(meaning I made whining comments and they turned the topic to a more abstract level) that fresh fruit availability and prices depend on a working infrastructure and demand.
The variant line from the usual pre-dawn call to prayer (not the Ramadan get-up-for-food call) is “Prayer is better than sleep”. Hmph.
Wow – exciting to read about your trip, and your analysis of some of the city planning aspects – these are things that we seldom get to hear over here in the states. So how’s the beer there?
Mike, good to hear from you. Re the important question of beer prices – we got a couple bottles for free in Aqaba, but since its mostly served in touristy bar type places, and Calvin basically doesn’t drink, I don’t know. Its hard to scan for prices, since I have trouble reading the numbers – ok, I can read 1, 9, and now 0 (which is a dot), but the thing that looks like 0 is 5, and othes look like ^ and such – I can look it up but mostly prices are not posted in restaurants or corner stores- you ask when you are buying it. (Calvin is much better at the numbers, and Arabic in general of course, although its not easy for him either.) Its unclear to me if this is so that all prices are negotiable, or if its considered rude to post prices – I think both. So I guess that means that you’ll need to come and do the extensive investigation that is required to address this important quandry. =;^)
Ann, thanks for the comments. I’ve been debating whether its a transportation planner’s worst nightmare, due to the whole unlivable mess of traffic, or a dream, because it is so obvious that so much could be done to improve the quaility of life for everyone, including the people who are spending so much wasted time sitting in traffic jams.
I don’t remember about fruit prices – we bought some in the grocery store, and the price was not so bad to make me not want to get it, and that is as far as I got with that, may check back when we return to Amman. We’ve been getting fruit smoothies in Aleppo, but along with other things – water mostly – so its a little dificult to calculate. Two large smoothies and a large bottle of water is SL 210. Because of Ramadan and the free breakfasts, we mostly eat a big breakfast, and go out, drink water somewhere, get back in the early afternoon to “chill” as Calvin puts it (and in this case its literally true), then go out to walk around more and go out to dinner. Since its uncomfortable eating out in the day we mostly don’t buy foods or eat out during those hours.