12: Amman: City of Contrasts 12/29/22

Greetings from Amman-

Started the day late (as you might imagine), missed breakfast but had a simple and quite good lunch at the W, and then we set off. Found a taxi close to the hotel and headed to the Citadel. Our driver, Mohamed (he’s the third Mohamed we’ve had as a taxi driver) was born in Palestine but emigrated with his family when he was just two. His English was barely existent, but we managed to get our points across, By the way, most of the serving class (drivers, hotel housekeepers, waiters, etc.) are non-Jordanian. The housekeeper for our room is from the Philippines. 

The Citadel is in the center of town, along with many other historic sites (some of which we will visit in the coming days, I suppose).. Most of the structures still visible at the site are from the Roman, Byzantine, and Umayyad periods and the remains at the site include the Temple of Hercules, a Byzantine church, and the Umayyad Palace. We initially thought we could walk from the Citadel to Rainbow Street (a buzzing avenue of shops and restaurants, which is especially festive—we had been told—on Thursday nights. Jordanians’ weekends begin on Fridays and Thursday evenings are times to be out and about. But we now understand the meaning of Amman being a city of seven hills! It is really difficult to walk because you are always on an incline, in the center of the town.

So we had Mohamed wait for us (an unnecessary decision we realized later because there were tons of taxis all around the Citadel) so that he could take us to Rainbow Street.

We got out of the taxi as soon as we arrived at Rainbow Street, which is clearly a somewhat upscale Amman area—sort of like walking in Rockridge for those of you who know Oakland. We poked around in shops and just checked out the scene. They have all sorts of things like colorful baskets, lights, and fake flowers strung across streets and buildings, adding to the festive nature of the area. We checked out two shops that sell only handmade Jordanian goods (mostly by women); the crafts are quite good. Then we tried to get into a little restaurant called Sufra that we had read about and knew was in this neighborhood, but they were totally booked (we made a reservation for tomorrow night) and walked up and down Rainbow street trying to decide where to eat (a place with wine, which is far easier here than in Egypt, but not universal). 

We finally settled into a little place with a very cold courtyard (I’m now wearing my puffy coat!; it’s in the 40s at night). They had little propane heaters so we managed ok. The heaters turned out to do double duty. When they brought the pita bread for our mezze order, the pita was not warm and we asked if they could warm it up— voila.. they just put the pita bread on top of the heater. Good thinking.

Jordan’s infrastructure is clearly more developed than Egypt—with traffic lights, paved streets, driving lanes, and showy tall buildings. Our area (where the W is) is clearly well maintained. As we’ve driven around the city (one day summary only) we’ve seen where everyday Jordanians live which is more akin to what we saw in Cairo–modular, flat-roofed and multi-story made of sun-dried adobe bricks, so the city has this overall brown/ochre color. From what we’ve read, the average salary for Jordanians living in Amman is about $17,000 (USD) per year which is considerably higher than Cairo. There are about 675,000 registered Syrian refugees living in Jordan, whose total population is about 10 million. We might try to visit one of the Syrian refugee camps, but they are located about an hour from Amman. Slum housing is also abundant and we will likely try to visit some of those areas, but our time here is really limited—we leave for Petra on the 1^st of January. So we’ll see how much we can actually see and do. 

The meal on Rainbow Street was fair and we probably would have gotten a better meal at the hotel, but we wanted to eat out on the street, and away from the hotel. There were some amazing falafel places but you had to eat standing up on the street and we were too cold and too tired to do that. Came back to the hotel to have a drink and some dessert, and now I’m signing off; it’s about midnight. More tomorrow.

Fern