It's been a while since I've written a post on our recent travels... well, let's face it. It's been a while since I've written a post period.
But our trip to Jordan a few weeks ago is one which I truly don't want to forget, so I've sat down and written as much as I can and how I remember it. I realize it's more rambling than actual travel blogging but I figure since pretty much this blog is dead already, hardly anyone will notice.
(Funny enough, last night's episode of
An Idiot Abroad had Ricky and Stephen send Karl off to Jordan which made me want to write this even more).
Despite our initial
travel planning issues, we landed in the capital Amman on Sunday evening such as planned. Our first outing the next morning was in the direction of the ancient roman ruins of Gerasa in what is now known as
Jerash, 50km or so north of the city. Gerasa was once one of the 10
Decapolis Cities in ancient Roman times and an important part of the Roman Empire. Today, the remaining ruins of what used to be without a doubt a magnificent city are still in quite good shape.
I have to confess I am not a big fan of roman ruins. There is usually
not much left to see and it takes way more imagination that I reckon I
have to sometimes reconstruct entire buildings and roads from a couple
of rocks lying around or a column crookedly still standing in place.
But visiting the Oval Forum, the amazing Theaters, the Hippodrome, the Colonnade, the Cardo Maximo, the Temples not to mention the imposing Hadrian's Arch greeting us at the entrance, you can easily be transported back in centuries and imagine what the city must have looked like.
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| Hadrian's Arch |
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| The Hippodrome |
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| The Oval Forum |
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| The Oval Forum + Fned & Hubby |
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| The Cardo Maximo - aka the main drag | | |
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| Bad ass Roman Fountain |
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| Artemis Temple - oh, yeah... I see it..... |
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| Cross section on the Cardo - that's a Roman traffic light for ya |
Our guide, Mohammed, kept asking us if we were ok with all the heat and the tricky ground, climbing up and down all those ruins and walking for hours. I guess we were just so in awe of the sights we didn't even notice any of those things and kept dragging poor Mo from one place to the other.
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| "Don't worry about me - you guys enjoy the Theater while I wait here in the shadow" |
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| "...and this is the Cardo, blah-blah-blah, moving along people, the sun is strong...." |
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| "ok, I'll take take the picture but after that, can we PLEASE go? - it's been TWO hours!!" |
Yup, 2 and a half hours later, we were back in the Jordanian capital. The modern city of Amman also has an incredible Roman Theatre which we visited later that afternoon. Carved directly into the rock mountain, it sits smack in the middle of the city center.
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| Smack in the middle of the city centre |
I do have to admire the Romans and their love and passion for the arts. The amount of work, time, effort and cost that must have been put into building those incredible amphitheaters, all so that the people would have a place to congregate and enjoy plays, concerts, recitals, meetings, etc.
I doubt any of our current governments would build us something like that in this day and age.
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| Upper seats probably went for a couple of sesterious |
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| Any seat of the house had good acoustics. ANY seat. |
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| Imagine watching a Lady Gaga concert with THIS view |
The amazing thing about these theaters was the incredible acoustics. They were built in just the right way that when the speaker stood at an exact location on stage and spoke at normal voice level, the sound resounded in just the right way around the theater so that EVERY SINGLE person in the 3000+ audience could clearly hear what was being said. No need for mikes or amplifiers --- and it still works to this day.
As I am a wee bit
obnoxious skeptical by nature, I decided to test this. I asked Hubby to stand on the stage and tell me he loved me while I went way up to the "sesterius" seating zone. He grudgingly accepted and despite him muttering a brief and embarrassed "je t'aime", I heard it. And so did the other couple dozen tourists visiting the site.
Mental.
As amazing as these sites were, the reality was that we hadn't come all the way to Jordan to see Roman ruins.
We left Amman the following day and picked up our rental car. After some initial setbacks, mainly having to do with the fact that the city is a freaking cement labyrinth and getting our head around the "7 circles" concept, we finally managed to leave Amman and headed out along the
King's Highway (modernized since the ancient times of the Middle East trade route) applying ourselves to the serious business of reaching Petra.
More to come later.
Fned.
6 comments:
Looks beautiful!
Oh, you're leaving us with a cliffhangar!! Can't wait to hear/see more :)
My biggest take away from this post is that you're practically a Brit...you just called something "mental".
They say that all the time!
Don't think we'll forget you owe us a Petra post.
As for amphitheaters and Roman ruins, and more specifically why modern governments don't invest as much in the arts, I think that building huge structures might have been more economically feasible during periods of slavery. I'm not up on my history here, maybe the locals and their governing counterparts just really wanted great acoustics and threw themselves into the work out of love, but that would surprise me.
Somehow I now feel like I've just come out publicly in favor of slavery. Or going to school. Go to school, kids! Read your history.
Clare: Oh girl, it really was!!
Aunt Stacy: Done! :-)
Kyle: LOL - I indeed noticed it a couple of times as I was writing the post. I think I am in grave danger of contamination here.
Catharticaggression: You're probably right in saying that it was slaves who actually built these theaters and other structures. I think that's probably the case with most of the world wonders and amazing sites of this planet. It still awes me though what that the human being is capable of building with their own hands. x
I only recently learned about Jerash, and now I really want to go. I minored in classical civilizations, so I do love me some ruins, and these just look beautiful!
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