After a lovely trip to Petra, we decided to take an adventure and drive up the fabled King’s Highway, built on the path of an ancient trade route from Egypt to Damascus. It was a beautiful drive, giving us sweeping views of the spectacular Wadi Mujib gorge and passing through many small and large Jordanian towns. The northern end of our drive included visit to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth where on the road overlooking the water our GPS put us at 392 meters or 1296 feet below sea level. We snuck into a luxury resort so Katherine could take a quick dip in the water. It was so windy that the waves were really up, and she only got about two minutes of float time but it was worth it. Kids weren’t allowed near the beach at this resort, so we don’t have a picture of Katherine in the water, but I did manage to dig out one of me in the Dead Sea on a visit 12 years ago to give you a sense of what it’s like.
The last stop on our trip, Amman, is a pleasant cosmopolitan city. We did lots of driving around the city. Claire and Juliet were deeply impressed at how many kids’ backpacks were on display on the racks outside the local markets. Stu also visited the King’s Academy, a school built in the image of his high school Deerfield with the mission of providing secular, co-educational boarding education to students from across the mid-east.
One interesting experience for all of us was visiting a Muslim culture during Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting. Many Jordanians didn’t drink or eat (or even smoke!) during the day, so once sundown came around families join together for an evening “Iftar” banquet to fill empty stomachs. We went to one of these dinners at a fancy restaurant, and it was a festive atmosphere with extended families gathered at large tables, endless amounts of food, and even costumed waiters serving juice to the kids (see picture). We hadn’t been fasting during the day, so it was a lot more food than we could handle!
The last day of our trip was fairly quiet, and we took a drive to and had a nice hike in the Ajloun Forest Preserve about an hour north of Amman. Then it was off to another long afternoon at the hotel pool, dinner and a movie for the girls, and early to bed so we could rise to catch our morning flights.
All in all, this trip was pretty amazing for us. The girls got to see some new cultures and beautiful sites that will give them some great memories (or at least blog posts and pictures). Katherine got to see the mid-east for the first time. And we all had a fun family adventure together!
