Ajloun and roadtrip

Early Friday morning. Ajloun is some 75 km from Amman away... so perfect for a day trip.

Ajloun Castle (Qal'at Ar-Rabad) was built by one of Saladin's generals in 1184 AD to control the iron mines of Ajloun, and to deter the Franks from invading Ajloun. Ajloun Castle dominated the three main routes leading to the Jordan valley and protected the trade and commercial routes between Jordan and Syria, it became an important link in the defensive chain against the Crusaders, who, unsuccessfully spend decades trying to capture the castle and the nearby village.
Source: http://na2.visitjordan.com/Default.aspx?tabid=169



So we got up early to be ready to hit the road before noon time. We drove off at around 11 a.m. and were in Ajloun at around noon. It is basically a small city with a castle nearby on a hill. There is one street that leads to the castle. You can't miss it. We bought a ticket and thanks to the fact that both have the residence permit now, we paid together a fraction of what tourists pay. The two of us got in a 500 piaster which is half a JOD which is around 50 Euro cent. Cool, isn't it? :-) So we strawled around in the castle and it is really impressive. You can only immagine how majestic it was back in times.

From the very top you have a very nice view over the complete area. On one side you can even see Israel as it is only a few kilometers away on the other three sides you see the beautiful Jordanian landscape. Amazing hills with trees and olive plantations.


We spent one hour or so in the castel an then we wanted to leave for our road trip. The goal was to drive towards the Israeli border and once arrived in the valley, drive along the Iraeli border, than to take a turn towards Amman. Ajloun is way more up than Amman at around 1300/1400 meters, the valley on the other side is below sea level. So the first part of the trip was consisting of driving down with the lowest gear possible and not to use the breaks at all in order to avoid to overheat them. You never know when you need them... we saw all different dead things on the road... You drive through all different climate zones which made the trip absolutely amazing. We started in Ajloun which is high up and surrounded by trees and very green in general. The lower we got the more desert climate it became.



Green is only where by whatever coincidence a bit of water finds its way down the mountain. But where there is water there is green. You drive down through true Arabic villages at least they look like those in my immagination. All the sudden the mountains stoped and we arrived at the end of a valley and in front of us there was this hughe plain. All packed with greenhouses. One next to the other and in the middle of the valley you have a "highway". Is mainly a road with four lanes. The impressing thing is that you are driving in the middle of green and on the left side the desert starts after some hundred meters and goes up the hills. So we drove along the road and enjoyed the variety of things we saw. Village after village, smaller and bigger ones...in one somebody just got married and apparently invited the whole village! The main road was blocked (!!), yes we were still on the main road, the one with four lanes... the police took care of the traffic at both entries of the village and in the middle they built up an enourmous tent where they feeded a few hundred persons and along the street everybody parked their car. Was just nice to see it. Before arriving down to the valley we had to pass a road block. I had only the residence permit with me and we hoped to get through...the officer stopped us (=green tag on the registration plate = rented car = non Jordanian). We lowered the window and he asked for I.D. and we gave him the residence permits and he asked me where we were heading (in Arabic) I understood :-) and answered: " Salt to Amman". (Salt is a city close to Amman). When you say Amman you have to say the first A like an Ä in German and very stress on the m's. So it sound like "Ämmmän" But he immediately recognized that I was not a local (...it says "Italian" on the permit ;-) and he said "Ahlan wa sahlan, welcome to Jordan!" Which means "Welcome" in Arabic followed by welcome to Jordan in English. I cannot stop to point out how friendly they are towards tourists or strangers in general. Very nice.
So we found our intersection and we took a left towards Amman. we drove along a Wadi (Valley in Arabic) and it was fantastic as at the bottom they had some tiny river and thus, the whole ground was covered with plants, trees and reed. But it was a stripe of maybe 30 meters and right and left desert. Very impressive. The street climbed up the hill and after some 15 minutes we reached sea level again. They always mark the sea level on a pillar next to the road.

After almost one hour we reached the suburbs of Amman and the civilization got us back again. We headed back to our appartment where we took a shower as during the day our thermometer showed one time more than 40°C but never less than 32°C. So we took a shower and quickly put our head down. We dinner and as good Italians we had pasta ;-). After the dinner we went to (since yesterday) our favorite spot in town. The place is just awesome! It is the terrace of a big international hotel. Immagine lounges under sail roofs on wooden stages with rattan tables surrounded by burning torches and a DJ playing chill out lounge music. This at 22 p.m. at a temperature of still 25°C... a cold beer and Katja next to me... live can really be nice. Unfortunately this place is booked out for the football championship final and so we cannot watch the game there :-( watching the game seems anyway to become an issue as all places are already booked out. We are simply not used to book place to watch TV that's why we were running late and now all the cool places are booked... We hope to find something anyway...

This was definitely a fantastic ending of another great weekend day in Jordan. Tomorrow we will check out some furniture stores to see what is available as we still need some stuff to fill our apartment. Keep your fingers crossed as next week our furniture should arrive in Amman, customs should be cleared and all our belongings should be brought after to our new flat (YES WE HAVE ONE!!!), put together and at the end of the week we hope to settle in to our permanent flat. This will be another, very important step towards our final settling in.

So stay tuned and keep your fingers crossed that a) our shipment arrives in Amman (we drove the road up from Aqaba... I tell you, it is steep... b) that we can clear customs and that they bring all the belongings to the apartment and put them together in the way they looked before leaving our old flat... ;-)

Take care wherever you are in this world and a big hug from Amman!

PS: As you may have noticed I added some gadgets to our blog entry page. If you know cool stuff to add: please let me know!

And for all with a Facebook accout: I posted new pics from Kalmar (Sweden) and from Ajloun and our road trip. Check them out and leave a post if you like them!