We have never been so surprised with a country as Jordan. I guess maybe because it is never really top of mind and manages to stay out of most Middle-Eastern shenanigans.
Jordanians call themselves the Switzerland of the Middle East. They are geographically right in the middle of the Middle and they are as neutral as you get in this region.
As such Jordan is a country of medium to high levels of prosperity, bringing medium to high prices with it.
It is clean, well stocked, well touristed (at least now that Iraq has settled down a bit), and the food is exceptional. About the only thing that met our ignorant expectation was that you couldn;t drink the tap water (even in Egypt you can, just not for extended periods).
I'll talk a bit about the food, because well, I like food.
Jordanian dishes circle a lot around chicken and lamb. The main dish, which is served up in HUUUUUGE quantities (especially at Bedouin weddings which typically have 3,000 people in attendance) is called Mansuf. Mansuf is fried and spiced lamb served with spiced rice in HUUUGE quantities, with salted yoghout poured over the top.
The salted yoghourt is an interesting one. It is made by the Bedouins in the deserts such as Wadi Rum (best place ever - I'll show you my photos when I get time - it would not be out of place in central Australia, much like a cross between the Flinders Ranges, Kata Tjuta and the Twelve Apostles with towering sandstone pillars reaching up to 900m above a myriad of conjoined red-sanded valleys - Wadi means valley).
Back to the yoghout. It is made from goat's milk and drtied in the sun with a shit load of salt. They can keep it up to 2 years and besides Mansuf they also eat it with tea. That is a salt explosion!
Other dishes are very typically Arabic, with plenty of Babaganoush, Hommous, Tabooleh, pita, Baklava, Halva etc. Just the quality in Jordan is a step above (apparently the Lebanese do it even better).
What about the sights?
PETRA: Indiana Jones was right to have a fight there. Do you remember the big facade of the city in the cliff at the end of the Last Crusade? That is the Treasury of Petra. I always thought this was the only thing t Petra. But no, Petra is an ancient city that spans hundreds of square kms. To see the main highlights we spend the best part of a day walking around the city.
The Treasury is the first main sight you come across after walking through the 2km long Siq (A claustrauphobic canyon with towering walls up to 200m high - again the photos with speak a lot about it).
After this we need to walk out into a much more open valley, again completely arid, and here we could see thousands of tombs as well as Roman temples (where did the Romans not get to?).
