On the Road To Petra
Trip Start
Sep 20, 2007
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39
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Trip End
Jan 10, 2008
Petra, Jordan
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
I ended up booking a "tour" today to head on down to Petra. Although called a tour it is pretty much just a taxi organized by the hotel which visits a few sights on the way from Amman down to Petra. I will quickly list the sights along the way today and my impression:
Mt Nebo
According to the bible, this is the place where Moses stood and God showed him the promised land that he was giving to the Jews. On a celar day you can apparently see all the way into Jerusalem, but unfortunately it was a little hazy when we were there so the views were quite average. The church on the site, which dates back to 394 AD, was quite modest but had some great mosaics. So is Mt Nebo a must see in Jordan?..... not in my opinion.
Madaba
We saw a couple of sights here. Firstly, the town is famous for the mosaic "map of Madaba" which dates back some 2000 years . IT is pretty much a mosaic map of the region and all the key towns/cities that existed at that time. Although it sounds impressive on paper, and I was certainly looking forward to it, the map itself was quite disappointing as it is only 1/3 complete and it is difficult to get an idea of how it looked back when it was complete.
The other sight seen at Madaba were the Archaeological Park and the Madaba Museum, both of which were quite average. I originally planned spending 2 days here and was so happy that I did not, as the sights were quite underwhelming.
Once again do I think a visit to Madaba is worthwhile? Probably not. I am seeing a pattern here with Lonely Planet really talking up some of these sights in Jordan which are really not much to see at all.
Kerak Castle
This Crusader fortress is regarded as the finest of all castles in Jordan. Well... I suppose when looking at this place I was comparing it to Krak in Syria which I had only seen a little over a week ago. To describe this sight in one word, it was good, not great, but good. There were some rather cool underground parts to explore with flashlight which I really enjoyed.
That was pretty much it in terms of "big name" sights that we saw, apart from that we stopped a few time where there was some nice scenery through valleys and canyons, although the land is extremely dry so although the views are immense they are not all that impressive.
We got to Petra around dinner time and didn't really do much, just figured out that everyone in Petra tries (and most of the time succeeds) to rip you off for just about everything.
