Jordan Revisted, As Promised

It’s like a little Jordan sandwich! We introduced our Jordan trip, got sidetracked and filled the sandwich with other things, and now we are back to the Jordan trip. Bon appetite!

You can read the first part of our trip by following this link. After leaving Hassan’s shop (pictured), we headed for the Al-Pasha Turkish Hammam. The Hammam, as we soon learned, is pretty much a public bath where someone else baths you. You wear your swimming suit…but it’s a little weird all the same. The process is as follows:




1) You shower off your outside muck and then you sit in a ridiculously hot steam room for 15 minutes. I mean, deathly hot. They bring you a cold hibiscus drink half way through, but that didn’t help me much. When Max was finished (they separate the men from the women) he proudly told me that he outlasted two Arabs in the steam room. What a man I’ve got.

2) You take another shower and then sit in a Jacuzzi until a masseuse/scrubber is free.

3) A nice Iraqi man named Fadl/Morrocon woman whose name I can’t remember scoured and scrubbed and peeled away layers of both Max and my skin, respectively.

4) Then you get a massage, on a marble slab, followed by a douse of water over your head.

And that’s a Turkish bath. We felt like Romans of old. The pictures on the web are very ancient looking. We actually really enjoyed our afternoon, but it was still a little bit odd.

After the Hamman we went back to out Hostel that, if you recall, cost only $11 dollars per night. It made us sad. I mean we survived, but….well, click on this pic to see the look on Max’s face.

The next day we spent with Hassan and his family in their living room. I offered up my pitiable Arabic vocabulary, but Max carried on most of the conversation. A few of Hassan’s children speak some English and so we practiced counting to 10 a few times. We were, of course, fed a wonderful Jordanian dish of roasted chicken, rice with nuts and raisins, and Tabbouleh.  This is only part of Hassan's Family, he has 6 kids total. 

That evening we strolled around Downtown Amman looking at the King Abdullah (the first) Mosque. We weren’t allowed in at that time, but outside was pretty impressive.

The trek home was absolutely awful. We got to the Jordanian border ok, but the bus trip across the bridge and subsequent experience at the Israeli nearly put us over the edge. I think I’ll let old man Stoneman tell you about this in the next post though.

 Downtown Amman

King Abdullah Mosque

Hassan in his shop.  He showed us a piece he is submitting to Dubai for a conference in a few months.