Amman — food driven pit stop

After the lush greens of Goa, the burnt looking barren land of the Arabian peninsula couldn't have been a starker contrast. Landing in Amman I wasn't sure if I should go for a day trip to the city or just hang out in the airport because the visa on arrival was more than 50€ and the airport was still more than one hour away from the city centre. I decided to go for it.

I took a local bus to the city with a mix of locals and foreigners. The amount of military vehicles and soldiers on the road to the city was a little alarming. I started to wonder if something serious happened in this country. Maybe that's why my flight was so cheap.

Closer to the city the bus took a different direction from what I was expecting. A couple of Italians in front of me were equally confused. Realising we were going in the same direction we decided to leave the bus and take a taxi for the last leg of the trip.

As soon as we leave the bus behind a guy comes to us asking if we need a taxi. The couple explained where they were going and started following the guy. They clearly didn't have much experience, you should never agree to a service without discussing the price first. I had to interrupt and start negotiating the price with the taxi. Once in the city centre I said goodbye to my new friends and went about exploring for myself.

I walked around and had a delicious gigantic meal of hummus, muttabal and fatteh with meat in my favourite Jordan restaurant — Hashem. I never thought a day would come when I would let hummus be trashed, it was just too much food. And I payed only 5 JOD (~6€) for that gigantic meal!

The down side was that I had no space to eat knafe... How disappointing!

I got to see the nice Roman amphitheatre and soon was time to go back to the airport.
I got a taxi right there at the square that I'm sure I overpaid. I had 3 and something hours until my flight but there was so much traffic downtown that it made me nervous.

At least my taxi driver had good enough English to keep up a conversation. He explained that the army out in the streets was due to protests for the high gas prices. Apparently a high ranking police officer had been shot dead by the protestors and the whole country was looking for the culprit. He explained that the family of the officer had more than 11 thousand people and all of them would be looking for revenge. So bizarre how things work in Jordan.

I arrived at the airport well in time for my flight. So much in fact that I got to watch the final of the world cup there. Argentina won against France in penalties right as I was boarding my plane to Budapest.Read more