Postcard: Odense

Down the street from Hans Christian Andersen’s house, in Odense, Denmark.

Jordan: Madaba, Jerash, and Amman

Making our way north, again, we visited Kerak castle, which had been built by a coalition of European crusaders.  Some sections had more ventilation shafts than necessary, likely as a way for factions to spy on each other.  Existing Nebataean carved blocks, as well as Roman columns were re-used in the construction, which makes for some odd-looking walls.

Postcard: Denmark

Ribe, Denmark

Petra

After heading down to the Dead Sea and back in one day, we were back on track the next day for our scheduled visit to Petra.  Zuhair advised us that we’d want to get an early start, due to the heat at mid-day and the crowds. Plus, the grounds at Petra are expansive, and it is a 3 km walk just to get from the entrance to the Treasury, the building seen above, the one you probably recognize from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Postcard: Vienna

Street in Vienna, Austria.

Jordan: Aqaba and the Wadi Rum

Our ferry crossing of the Red Sea from Egypt to Jordan was quite smooth.  We were all taken aback when, as we were preparing to leave the boat, the ships officers demanded we hand over our passports, and then continue onto land without them.  Lana and I hadn’t been parted from our passports in 7 months.  We had no alternative, and the officers either didn’t, or wouldn’t speak any other English, so we all handed them over, and marched onto land.  We were immediately met by Zuhair, who was to be our G Adventures guide in Jordan, and he quickly reassured us about the passports; everything was perfectly normal.  He shepherded us into the amazingly advanced immigration office at the port of Aqaba, where they used retinal scanners to associate each passenger with their passport.  Apparently a massive amount of cargo flows through Aqaba, so they need a very efficient system.

Cairo and Nuweiba

We returned to Cairo for a day before continuing on to the Sinai, and while we were there, we saw some some of Cairo’s newer monuments—relatively young stuff, less than a thousand years old.  We visited the Citadel and the Alabaster Mosque; the Citadel was built by Saladin in the 1100’s, and the mosque was built in the 1800’s.