World Wonder, Rock City, Petra (Jordan)

Ed-Deir Monastery...it's big, that's me in the doorway.

We arrived in Jordan on December 18th by way of Istanbul from Munich. The airport Visa process and luggage claim were slow. We met up with Raheed to get our rental car at the airport, Kia Picante, small and a bit worn, it was functional. We drove to our hotel in Madaba, just outside the capital city of Amman. The next day we headed for Petra, about a six hour drive and along the way we made stops. The first was St George Church in Madaba known for its ancient tile mosaics. The most famous is on the floor and depicts a map of the dead sea area including Jerusalem and Bethlehem as well as the rest of the area…it was built in the 6th century A.D..
Jordan has its own canyon (Wadi Mujib) similar in some ways to the grand canyon and we crossed it on our way south to Petra. We decided to take some smaller roads and as a result we made a few wrong turns and ended up seeing a lot of Jordan.
We did arrive in Petra after dark on the 19th of December and checked into what I can only describe as the worst hotel room I have ever had…it was at least clean and warm (no bugs !) and the bed was sleepable, otherwise it was pretty funny.[see: no need to lock the door because the paint job made it almost impossible to open when unlocked!]

the classic shot...

We woke up on the 20th and drove about 5 minutes to the entrance of Petra, the stone city. Built from 3000 BC – 200AD it was massive and impressive. There are over 800 ruins there and many people spend 2 days to try to see the major sites. We did it in one day and while we probably missed a lot of things, we saw the highlights and spent about 7 hours hiking up and downhill to do it. Pictures don’t do it justice, like a lot of places. Petra is one of the 7 wonders of the world for a reason.