Jordan

Hi all, We were most excited about this stop. It has been 45 years since we were here and there is nothing that is the same. The Jordanians have made this an economic free zone and there is much construction going on. |Lots of big hotels, apartments, etc. The sheik from AbuDhabi has a big project going on. In a few years this will be another Monte Carlo.
Yesterday we took the shuttle bus to town and hired a cab to take us around. There are lots of tourist shops mixed in with regular stores. We went to several gold shops but the price was too expensive for my taste. ||Our driver was really nice. The weather was nice .overcast and not terribly warm. However  it warmed up after we ate lunch and it started to bother me. We did a little shopping , drank tea, ate lunch and went back to the ship.
Today we took a bus to Wadi Rum..we had never been in Wadi Rum..always just had ridden past it. It has really been built up as far as little villages, etc. The Bedouins have the monopoly on the tours, etc and have done quite well with it.
Soon we were all in the back of pickup trucks with benches in the back. We drove off into the desert to various places. We stopped at a total of 4 Bedouin camps...most were permanent structures with a half-wall with benches and a tent over the top. Some of them were selling things besides giving us tea. We saw no women...many men in the kafeeya on their phones. The Cunard line Queen Elizabeth pulled into berth right behind us last night and dwarfed our ship. This morning there must have been 30 tourist buses out in front of their ship. Anyway, there lots of pickup trucks in the desert but it worked out well so there weren't a lot of people at each stop. The rock formations are really incredible.The sand is something else to walk in...very slippery and hard to walk in. At one of the camps there must have been 20 camels..I got on and rode it around for a few minutes..can't imagine doing that for days.

In town there are many woman the chador...we never saw that when we lived here. The woman were wearing their traditional dress that had lots of embroidery on the front and sleeves ...they may have had several layers of clothes on underneath that. They had a scarf on their head but not covering their faces...really different now.
\yesterday at the restaurant we had tabbouleh, hummus, and fried kefta....good. also a lemon-mint tea...really good.
Today in the camps we had tea that also had cardamon in it. good but different.


Tonight we eat in the Polo Grill...then in two days we eat in the Tuscona..one more day and then we go through the Suez canal..then three days in |Jerusalem.
Will keep you posted. Barb.