| Submitted by: John Mittler, Finland |
| Submission Date: 28 March 2007 |
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“Only 100 shekels? Not any more than that?”, the tourist guide complained, as I paid him for the one-hour tour. He stepped out of my car, and kept murmuring: “Whatever you want to pay me, I always let the customer decide...”
It took twenty minutes to drive from Jericho to Qumran. I paid the entrance fee, climbed on the roof of the reception kiosk, and took a panoramic photo set of the area. Then I went back to my car and drove away, only ten minutes after having entered the site. (I missed the caves, but my plan for this journey was to see little of everything, instead of seeing everything of little.)
Leaving Qumran at 10:30, I drove northwest towards Jerusalem, and picked a young hitch-hiker who was travelling to a small Jewish settlement on the West Bank, not far from Ma’aleh Adummim. The guard at the gate of the settlement regarded me as a security risk, however, and refused to let me drive in, despite my hitch-hiker’s attempts to persuade the guard. The boy had to walk the final kilometer or two to his home, while I turned back towards Jerusalem.
The weather was favourable for panoramic photography (though more clouds would have been welcome on the sky, to make the background perfect). I spent two hours and a half taking panoramic photos of Jerusalem, from several nice locations around the Old City. These photos are available on a separate page, with a map indicating where each photo was taken.
At 14:15 I visited the HolyLand hotel in southern Jerusalem, hoping to see the model of ancient Jerusalem. I was told that the model has been relocated at Israel Museum, so I left the hotel and continued southeast towards Herodion (which is 12 kilometers south of Jerusalem).
The driving instructions that I had found on the Internet recommended driving first to Ramat Rachel and then towards Tekoa. I could not find any road signs to Tekoa or Herodion in Ramat Rachel, so I stopped at a construction site to ask for help. (New houses seem to be rising here like mushrooms on rainy weather.) The builders told me that the road to Herodion is no longer in use, because the path of the security wall cuts the road, and Herodion is on the other side of the wall.
I heard that there would have been a hiking route to Herodion, but I did not have time for hiking. Instead I went hunting for the model of Jerusalem, which was supposed to be at Israel Museum near the Knesset. But when I arrived at Israel Museum, I only found a construction site proclaiming that the model of ancient Jerusalem was being relocated to this site. The work was not ready yet, and the place was not open for public.
It was 15:30 o’clock already, the sun was slowly beginning to set, and all major tourist attractions would soon close their doors. I finished the more or less scheduled part of the day by taking a photo of the Cross Monastery next to Israel Museum. Then I finished this ChristMas day by driving 130 km north to Nazareth, via highway 6 near the coast of Mediterranean Sea.
I arrived at the shopping mall of Nazareth Illit at 18:30, and ate an unceremonial ChristMas dinner in a fast food restaurant. (Nazareth Illit is the modern Jewish city, a few kilometers east of the older city called Nazareth, which is inhabited mainly by Muslims and Christians.) After the discounted ChristMas meal I drove to Nazareth and started looking for Fawzi Azar Inn, where I had booked a room for the night.
I parked my car somewhere on the narrow alleys of Nazareth (which are not really wide enough for car traffic, but used for that purpose anyway). I tried to memorize the name of the street, which was a number code only (as were all the small streets in this area). Then I started walking towards the assumed location of the hostel, using a map that was not quite detailed enough to be more helpful than annoying. I found the hostel anyway, and then we returned with the manager of the hostel to search for my car, which I had left somewhere on a street named with a number code or something...
When we found the car, the manager of the hostel directed me to a better and safer parking lot — which turned out to be the most annoying parking lot that I have ever seen. The entrance was narrower than my car, and I had to drive with one tyre on the stairway and the other tyre on the so-called street, to get through the ramp that lead to the parking lot.
After clearing this obstacle without ruining the car, there were yet more challenges ahead: the lots for cars where in pairs of two, surrounded by large beton vases on both sides. These beton vases were less tall than the front and rear part of cars, so it was impossible to see them from behind the steering wheel. The vases were simply waiting there like mines to be hit by a careless driver (and probably also by many quite careful drivers). With the help of the hostel manager I cleared also these obstacles, but I was not very enthusiastic about the thought of returning here early next morning to pass all these obstacles and the far too narrow entrance ramp, alone.
The trip meter of the car showed 2525 km (of which 305 km had been driven today), as I left the car on the parking lot and hoped that no one would steal it or destroy it during the night. (An hour earlier I had seen police officers inspecting smashed car windows on the parking lot of Nazareth Illit shopping mall, while I visited the mall to eat my ChristMas dinner.)
We walked back to Fawzi Azar Inn with the hostel manager, and I received a room for four people, for the price of a dorm bed. (This was not high tourist season for Nazareth, while in many other cities in the Middle East ChristMas is a high season with inflated prices and large crowds of tourists.) I left the lights on in my room, and went to the lobby to surf on the Internet for a while.
When I returned to my room, I could easily see into the room from the outside (now that the lights were left on in the room). The large windows of the room had thin red curtains, which gave the impression of blocking light while I was inside the room, but actually did not do so when seen from outside, while the lights were turned on in the room.
One of my favourite hobbies is spotting idiotic blunders made by architects and interior designers, and imagining a law that would send an architect back to school for a year if his design contains major blunders. It is not uncommon to see shower facilities where the showers and their users are visible into the public area outside, when someone else opens the door to enter the place or exit from there. My first hostel on this journey, the Sky Hostel in Tel Aviv, had toilets and shower facilities meant for both genders, with some kind of doors but no locks of any kind.
I turned the lights off in my room, wished myself merry ChristMas, and went to sleep.
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Tue 26 December 2006
I left Nazareth after 6 o’clock in the morning, and drove 25 km southwest to Tel Megiddo national park, which would not be open so early in the morning. I only took a photo from the road outside Megiddo, and then continued east towards Beyt Shean and the border crossing to the Kingdom of Jordan.
After a breakfast in a cafeteria along the highway, I arrived at the parking lot of Sheikh Hussein border crossing terminal at 07:50. I left most of my luggage and all Hebrew publications in the car, because the law of Jordan forbids importing any Hebrew publications into the country. The trip meter of the car showed 2600 km, of which 75 km had been driven this morning.
The border crossing to Jordan would have taken half an hour only (as there were very few travellers so early in the morning), but I was unlucky to just miss the border bus by one minute — and the next bus would go half an hour later.
At 9 o’clock I was finally on Jordanian soil, and a smiling middle-aged man helped me to find a taxi, after which he asked if I had any “baksheesh” for him. I had already learned from travel accounts on the Internet that this word means “tip”, so I gave him a dollar, and another 25 dollars to the taxi driver for taking me to Jerash. (The taxi prices were fixed, written on the wall of the taxi station, giving the impression that there was no bargaining about the price — for anyone who looks like a western tourist anyway.)
Jerash is located 50 km southeast of the border terminal, and we should have reached it in half an hour, but instead we soon found ourselves in Irbid, which is 30 km northeast of the border terminal. The taxi driver blushed a bit, when he realized that he had driven astray, but he did not comment the issue in any way. I actually enjoyed getting some extra sightseeing in rural Jordan.
We arrived in Jerash at 10 o’clock, and I agreed with the taxi driver that he would wait for me at the parking lot while I visit the tourist attractions of Jerash, and then he would take me to Amman (which is 30 km south of Jerash). These arrangements cost me another 20 dollars.
Local men dressed in traditional suits were playing bagpipe and drums in the amphitheater, as I climbed on top of the theater to take a 360° panoramic photo of the ruins of ancient Roman Jerash.
The walled area of ancient Jerash used to be nearly 1 km˛. Half of that has been preserved as a national park, and the rest of the ancient city has disappeared under the modern town. Horse race shows are arranged in ancient Roman style on the hippodrome of Jerash, but the show was not running during the winter months as I visited the site.
The air was not very fresh in Jerash, it carried the scent of exhaust gases of cars, to the extent that may disturb some visitors. In the countryside of Jordan the air was fresher, but to compensate this difference, my taxi driver smoked in the car while driving.
At 10:45 o’clock I had seen enough of Jerash, and we continued towards Amman, arriving on the Citadel hill at 11:30. If the air quality had been poor in Jerash, in Amman it was yet worse. Air pollution due to exhaust gases of cars is a common problem in large metropoles around the world, and Amman seemed to be a prominent example of this. A holiday to destinations of this kind might change you permanently, either into an asthmatic or into a nature activist.
I spent half an hour at the ruins and archaelogical museum of the Citadel hill, then another half an hour walking to the amphitheater (which is located one kilometer from the Citadel hill), and yet half an hour exploring the amphitheater and its two small museums.
Just across the street from the amphitheater there was a pet shop selling monkeys, rabbits and other small pets. Monkeys are not a common pet in the western countries — I have no knowledge about the details of this issue, how well monkeys would behave compared to other pets, how large living space they would need to be happy (the cage below looks too small for sure...), and what restrictions the western legislation sets for owning a monkey.
I was feeling a bit hungry, but the numerous fast food kiosks along the street did not look very inviting to me. I had forgotten to take the recommended vaccinations before the journey, so I would not have much immunity if the food happens to be contaminated. I wanted to play safe, so I took a taxi to the nearest international fast food restaurant. The driver suggested the Burger King at the university of Amman, but while we were driving there, I noticed a shopping mall with McDonald’s, and we stopped there.
I picked a Quarter Pounder meal into a takeaway bag, while the taxi driver was waiting on the parking lot, and I ate the meal in the taxi while we were driving to the southern bus station of Amman (from where all buses to Petra depart).
It was 14:15 o’clock as I arrived at the southern bus station, still eating my hamburger. I consulted the local people to find the platform for buses leaving to Wadi Musa and Petra, and I was directed to a queue where five or ten other people were waiting for a bus. When the bus arrived and I stepped in, the driver told that this bus is not going to Petra, and I should go to another queue. |
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