The Citadel

Must have been some kind of a holiday here today. The streets were swarming with families, and the mosques were all crowded. The Imam's chants seemed more frequent, although the 4:30am call to worship is always a bit intrusive when you can hear three different mosques go off, and they are all a minute or so different.

After breakfast, we headed off on foot to the Citadel. Only 20 minutes away, but Amman is a very hilly city, and of course the citadel is on top of the highest, so there were a few hills and steps to negotiate.

The citadel is the site where the main fortifications for the town (and now city) have been built and maintained by successive civilisations (Persians, Greeks, Romans, Christians and Muslims), so the Temple of Hercules is next to the Byzantine church which is next to the mosque, all inside the fortified walls. Well, actually the walls aren't really fortified. One of the locals whose house backed on to the citadel tried to wave us up his front stairs, so we guessed that for a small payment you could sneak in through the back fence. Turned out that we were on the money, and the locals just wandered in and out, while groups of boys played football on the flat areas.

Spurning the offer, we trudged around the road to the proper entrance. A really nice place to wander around and explore, and of course it has a great panoramic view of the city. There is also the Jordan Archaelogical Museum in the complex, but it's a real disappointment as it is old, dusty and badly kept, and also because the major exhibits like the Dead Sea Scrolls have been removed to the Jordan Museum which leaves it for dead.

Heading down through the local's backyards to avoid the long walk, it was back to the hotel mid afternoon for a rest, then out for dinner. We decided to head up the hill and steps back to Rainbow Street to see if it came alive at night. Nope. Apart from one large group of locals celebrating at one restaurant, we were pretty much the only ones there. Some of them obviously weren't expecting anybody to be out, and one poor guy jumped up in an awful hurry to turn the lights on and open the restaurant door when he saw us reading the outside menu. Pretty much had our chosen restaurant to ourselves. Goodness knows how they kept the dozen staff, as well as those in the kitchen, employed. However, it was a lovely meal. Real vegetables for the first time in weeks was a treat (did I just say that?).