Amman

Today was my last day in Jordan and the plan was to have another easy day and visit Amman.

The main and maybe the only tourist thing to do in Amman is to visit the Citadel

The Citadel is at the top of one of the many hills in Amman and the views are magnificent

You can also see the Roman Theatre

The city has been under different names over the years... and below are the names under which it has been known (together with the periods)

The most remarkable features were the temple of Hercules

Not much left...

And the Mosque

 As you can see it's still in a re-construction phase...

 As you can see below, the ceiling has been completely re-constructed

All that is well and good but probably the most remarkable thing about the Citadel is the underground stone channels for harvesting and saving as much water as possible.

The Citadel never had a natural spring and the only way to have water is by carefully collecting and storing rainwater. Not a drop was wasted and they built very sophisticated underground stone channels for that very purpose. These water channels and cisterns have been built and re-built over the centuries by different civilisations.

Small cisterns

And the largest kick-ass cistern

17.5m of diameter and the walls are 2.5m thick, apparently inside the walls were plastered so to prevent the water from filtering through the walls.

 

After this we went to have lunch to a place nearby Maria's which is always full of locals and it's a bit like a tapas bar in Spain...

On our way to the restaurant we saw this

They don't exchange money... they exchange MONY   :-)

The restaurant doesn't look very impressive...

But the experience in this place was a bit surreal...

You go in and get a seat... a few seconds later without saying a word someone passing by will casually leave some bread on your table as he continues his way towards another table...

Then someone who didn't speak a word of English took note of our order... and stuff started to appear on our table from different people walking in every direction. As they were passing by they would just leave stuff on our table as they continued towards the next table leaving more stuff there and so on and so forth...

Amazingly enough... the guy got our order spot on, we got exactly what we wanted!!... And we didn't even know the name of one of the dishes we wanted!!

Nothing like the international language of signs... and a few words here and there to make yourself understood.

If they saw you were running out of bread... more bread would just appear in a matter of seconds... without you moving a finger or telling anyone.

They had lots of it... everywhere...

We went for the falafels  which were quite nice

 Then for something we called "destroyed Spanish Omelette"

Because it just looks like someone was making a Spanish Omelette when some accident happened in the kitchen and that's what they came up with... Incidentally, this is the plate we didn't know how to order but we said "Batata" (which is Potato in Arabic) and the guy immediately knew what we wanted... :-)

Some humus to help with the bread...

And that was it... another tough day, eating like a king... :-)

Then in the afternoon we met up with Isabel for a drink and went home to pack as tomorrow I'm flying back to London...