Wandering Amman

Amman was a really interesting city to explore and we took the opportunity to walk around as much as we could.

Following our introduction to local driving, we wanted to see a few of the sites but we also wanted to see how the city looked outside the purely touristic places and so first we targeted to see the Grand Husseini Mosque. It had a grand name, it wasn’t high on the touristic recommendations and it was within walking distance so we figured that was the ticket. Our walk started near Rainbow street where lot of commerce and restaurants can be found but soon enough we veered off into some of the minor streets and things started to be a bit off… 

The streets started to get dirtier, the commerce seemed to be reduced to auto shops with car parts thrown around, there were barbers and tailors but more than that there were no women visible on the street except for the one walking with me and that was making me tenser by the meter.

It’s not that people payed any special attention to us but my reptilian brain was flaring with warning signs as in the back of my mind I thought that we were heading in the direction of a Mosque and people may get more and more sensitive about women walking around without fully covering themselves. I distinctly remember feeling uncomfortable as we walked past what appeared to be the most stylish burka shop in town, which was actually the first one I had ever seen. Those might not have been the longest 15 minutes of my life but as we made it on to the main street near the Mosque, I felt a relief I can’t entirely describe.

There, near the Grand Husseini Mosque things changed dramatically. Suddenly there were dozens of stands selling all sorts of things, hordes of people walking by and going about their lives and a faint smell of cardamom in the air. This was the Jordan we were hoping to see! 

As it turned out, we could not enter the Mosque but could get a glimpse of it from the outside and quickly decided that we wanted to visit the King Abdullah I Mosque as we discovered it was the one place in the city which allowed non-Muslim visitors.

Not being the most traditional of tourists, we were only slightly interested in the more historical sights but with the Roman theatre just around the corner, we felt that we simply needed to go take a look see. What we encountered at the entrance to it was that it was essentially like a garden of millennial derelict structures just laying around. There were columns in both vertical and horizontal positions as well as different rocks left over from Roman buildings just on display as if they were flowers and all of this just next to a major city artery. And there it was, the Theatre. Functional, well maintained and… small. It kinda hit me there and then that modern buildings have become soulless massive behemoths of functionality. It also occurred to me that maybe 2000 years ago someone probably stood where I was and judged that same building the same way I was judging modern ones. Perspective is a curious thing.

Next up was the Citadel which was fairly close according to the GPS. We could see some ruins up the hill from the Theatre so we figured we might as well walk there while exploring the small streets on the way.

Sure enough, as soon as we left the main artery, the streets began to be dirtier and women were no longer to be seen but somehow after being bathed in the crowd, we no longer felt the tension from before as we understood that it is simply the way the city is configured. Either that or the walk up hill started to get to us. Both options are possible.

20 hard fought minutes up that hill, we eventually made it to the entrance of Amman Citadel only to find out it was no longer accepting tourists unless they paid an excessive amount (it must have been around 18h00). That was a real disappointment as we did not have that much time to sightsee and we just invested a good bit of it to get to what was supposed to be one of the highlights.

It was at this point that humanity saved us. A gentleman saw us looking miserably near the entrance and asked us if we had the Jordan Pass (which we did). He explained that it was too late for tourists like us but he told us to go in anyway and pointed to an open entrance. We felt confused. It appeared that he was just telling us to go in without paying at a building which was guarded by armed troops but on the other hand, the entrance was open and nobody was stopping us from just walking in. “Go! Go! Go!” he ushered us and well… we just went in and… nothing happened. Nobody asked for a document, nobody asked for money, in fact nobody cared and we were free to explore the entire site. It was brilliant and though I thought that guy was a taxi driver which would wait for us to make some money when we left (he wasn’t by the way), it really saved the day and I am forever grateful.

I have to say, the walk through the Citadel was a real treat. It wasn’t so much for all of the ruins as much as it was for the view of the city. Up there, near a vineyard, we sat down and just contemplated this ancient city, the architecture and all the life going on around us. It was a magical moment.