North to South

We awoke this morning to a cold, frosty, wintry day with the wind coming in from the north. Blue skies and sunshine do not mean warm weather here in January. We went off to the citadel of Amman, located on one of 7 hills. From this vantage point we got a fantastic view of old Amman. The citadel is also where the remains of the Temple to Hercules once was. Built by the Romans,the statue of Hercules standing some 15m tall, stood inside the temple. All that remains is a hand and fingers lying in the soil. The citadel was a fortress for many different civilizations and we walked through byzantine and ottoman ruins. There was a small archaeological museum there with a range of artifacts. One stunning ivory and inlaid ebony fountain was our choice of the piece of the museum. WE then travelled through the more prosperous areas of Amman, where the wealthy and foreign embassies are located. There is a lot of wealth here!!!! We even saw the Australian embassy. It only warranted one guard outside, unlike our American friends who seemed to have a whole army outside their embassy!!! We then started south to Mount Nebo where MOses is said to have brought the Israelites, seen Israel and then died. He is apparently buried on the mountain and this has been confirmed by the Vatican recently. So it must be true!!! This hill looked down onto a spring said to have been created by Moses with his staff. There were remains of Byzantine churches and some beautiful mosaics that we saw replicas of. Sadly the Church is under restoration and we couldn;t see the originals. Mt Nebo looks out on to Israel, the Dead Sea, and we saw Jericho and in the hazy distance could see Jerusalem and Bethlehem. We have both found it advantagious to have been brought up with bible stories, whilst in this area! After freezing to the point of numbness we moved on to have lunch where we tried the national dish of Jordan. This is mansaf (a lamb dish cooked in yoghurt and rice). Quite unusual flavour. We traveled onto see the new world heritage site where Byzantine ruined churches hid magnificent mosaics. These were exceptional and one cannot express enough admiration for the skills. However, we weren't seeing them in their original form. Oh no...the iconoclasts had got there first & sabotaged the work. What we see now is an example of how the iconoclasts rearranged images. Nearby was a tower with no entrance where a monk would sit and meditate. He could only communicate or leave the tower by means of a rope. This led us onwards to a Crusader Castle that we were not allowed entrance to. The tourist police officer decided it was too cold and he wanted to go home. Still it looked good perched on top of the hill. Finally we arrived in Petra. The challenge is to survive tonight when we head to the Petra under lights show. It is probably going to mean losing a few digits to frostbite but whatever!!!