Weekend up North

My roommate Kirsten went to Germany this weekend to visit her sister, so I impulsively decided I wanted to go somewhere, too.  I originally looked at tickets to either Cairo or Beirut, but I started looking last Thursday.  Poor planning on my part, I know.  So when Matt suggested we go somewhere within Jordan, I changed my plans.  We decided on going to Umm Qais and Jerash which are located north of Amman.  Umm Qais is an ancient Roman city, located in the very tip of Jordan’s most northern border.  From the city, you can see the Sea of Galilee, Palestine, Israel, Syria, the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley, and Lebanon.   Jerash is located just 40 km north of Amman and I would describe it as the Jordanian equivalent of Rome.  The tiny (ok, Rome isn’t tiny) city of Jerash is built around the ancient Roman ruins.  Right beside a marble column built in 86 BC or earlier stands a traffic light.

Matt and I left from the university right after class on Thursday afternoon.  We took a bus from campus to the North Bus Station in Amman, and from there we took another bus to Irbid.  The ride was only about 1 and ½ hours total, and only cost $3.00 for the trip. The bus to Irbid took us to the new bus station, but the minibus to Umm Qais left from the North Bus Station, so we took another bus to that station, only to get on another one to Umm Qais.  So after 4 bus transits, we made it to Umm Qais. 

Since there aren’t technically any bus stops (as a knock on the window constitutes a bus stop), Matt and I had no idea where we should get off. All of a sudden, I saw a huge sign in the middle of the road that said “Umm Qais Hotel,” so I knocked on the window.  We got off, but the hotel sign was literally in the middle of the road.  After a couple minutes of standing on the street corner trying to find the hotel, we asked somebody who pointed us up an alley where hotel was written on the wall.  Classy. 

We walked in the door, expecting a reception desk, but the so –called “reception desk” was simply a guy sitting in front of a tv.  He had to put on his shoes, and then walked over to us to show us to our room.  We walked up three floors to get to room 119 (how that makes sense, I’m not quite sure), which was ours for the night.  Describing the room as modest would be generous, but I guess it would do for the night.  After seeing our room, it wasn’t hard to understand why the guidebook said most people made a day trip out of Umm Qais, instead of staying the night. Oh well.  We learned the hard way. 

The one bed in the room was probably as comfortable as a park bench, and the pillow was pretty much as thin as the sheets.  The screen had a hole in it, which was “patched” by putting a paper towel in it. Apparently, it was still permeable as Matt and I woke up itching. Hopefully they were just mosquitoes, and not bed bugs. Either way, I’d rather not know where the itching came from. The bathroom had no toilet paper and the shower had no door or curtain, so it flooded the bathroom when used.  There was one towel.  (I took a shower first...sorry Matt.)

By the time we had settled in, and by settled in I mean stopped complaining and come to terms with the fact that we had to stay there for the night, we decided to walk down to the ruins and eat dinner at the Umm Qais Resthouse that is famous for its views.  On our way to the ruins, we stopped at a little grocery store to buy toilet paper for our hotel room (a little illogical, huh?).  We asked the cashier how to get to the Resthouse, and all of a sudden a guy comes out of nowhere and offers to show us the way. 

The resthouse was literally 5 minutes down the road, but our new friend Khalid decided to be our guide for the evening.  He walked with us all the way, and he tried to get us a table at the Resthouse Restaurant, but it was booked for the night.  So I guess plan B was for Khalid to give us a tour of the ruins.  He was a fantastic tour guide, and he only spoke in Arabic, so I was very proud of myself that I understood the majority of what he said. 

The view was absolutely gorgeous.  We could literally see all the way to Syria, Palestine, and Israel.  Khalid explained what everything was and pointed out all the different countries.  And after about an hour of walking around the ruins and looking at the view, he asked what we wanted for dinner.  We said we didn’t have any plans since the Resthouse was full, so he took us to a local restaurant for hummos and falafel.  It was some of the best falafel I have had in Jordan! And of course the meal was washed down with a cup of hot Jordanian tea.  After dinner, Khalid invited us to go to a party in Irbid with him, but Matt and I decided to go back to the hotel room instead.  So Khalid said he would meet us in front of our hotel at 10 am the next morning (inshallah—God willing), so he could be our guide for the day and then drive us to Irbid so we could take a bus to Jerash.

Matt and I went back to the hotel to get some sleep, since it had been an exhausting day.  But the hotel offered us little comfort.  The bed was impossible to sleep on, it was very hot, and the ceiling fan sounded like it was about to fall off the ceiling and onto the bed in the middle of the night. After about 2 hours of trying to sleep, I somehow managed to drift off, only to wake up every couple hours.

Eventually, Matt and I both woke up at 6 am…so much for our plan to sleep in. But at that point, I was surprised I had even ‘slept in’ until 6! I got up and showered and was ready to go, but Matt took his sweet little time getting ready, and somehow managed to get himself together by 10:15.  We walked downstairs, and “checked out,” which pretty much meant that we told the guy we were leaving and paid him our 20 JD rate.  We left our stuff in the front room of the hotel while we spent a couple hours at the ruins. 

I guess God didn’t will Khalid to meet us at 10 am that morning, so we just went to the ruins ourselves.  We remembered enough of his tour last night to avoid needing a guide.  We walked around the old Roman city and took in the views, and eventually made our way to the Resthouse for lunch.  The food was incredible and that coupled with the views is an experience words cannot describe.

I know this is going to sound really lame, but sitting there looking at Syria almost made me cry.  It has been my dream to visit Syria, and coming so close but not being able to enter was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time.  I was a stone’s throw away from the country of “my people” and I have come to terms with the fact that it’s the closest I’ll come to Syria…for now.

After lunch, we went back to the hotel to pick up our backpacks and walked to the main street to catch a bus back to Irbid.  The entire city had shut down, shops and restaurants closed, because it was Friday prayer.  The mosque let out as we were waiting on the corner, and all the men filed out, opening their shops, or stopping to buy bread before returning home.  I had not seen another woman on the street on Thursday night or Friday, which was a very shocking experience for me. I definitely felt like a spectacle walking down the street, not only because I was a foreigner, but also a woman! Not to mention that I was wearing a bright pink shirt. Probably not the best idea. Oops.
Anyway, we stood on the corner of the main street for about 10 minutes and didn’t see a single bus come.  Some guy shouted “Irbid?” out the window of his empty van, but Matt and I looked at each other and decided to go with our gut instinct on this one and ignore him.  Eventually a black bus going to Irbid drove by, and we flagged it down and were Irbid bound…until a guy on the other side of the road flagged down the bus and asked the driver to go back to the city center. So we went back to Umm Qais and started all over again. This time we made it back to Irbid and got on another bus to the other bus station. 

All of a sudden out of nowhere, it started pouring rain. Like torrential downpour.  I soon came to figure out that a desert rainstorm is very similar to a Tampa thunderstorm because they both last for maybe 10 minutes, and then it’s back to being sunny and a million degrees again.  So by the time we were at the south bus station in Irbid, the storm had already cleared up. 

We walked around trying to find a bus to Jerash, but the station was rather empty.  It was a Friday afternoon, afterall, so buses only run sporadically.  We found out that we had to take a service since the last bus to Jerash had already left for the day, so some guy (not an actual service) said he would drive us for 5 JD.  I was skeptical to get in his car, but Matt seemed ok with it, so I gave in and went.  The trip was only about half an hour and when we got to Jerash, the driver asked where we we staying.  I told him the Olive Branch Resort, which is about 7 km out of town, and he pitched a fit.  He said in order to take us there it would be another 5 JD, making the total 10 JD. I argued back with him because that amount was absolutely ridiculous.  He was doubling the price for another 7 km! I don’t think so.  I tried arguing with him, but I couldn’t do it coherently in Arabic, and his English was worse than my Arabic, so eventually I gave in.  We paid the 10 JD.  They know that us Americans are easy targets.  But at least we got to the hotel, and taxis in Jerash are hard to come by, so it was worth it in the long run.

This hotel was considerably nicer than the one in Umm Qais, but it was definitely a Jordanian version of a resort.  Matt and I walked into the room and plopped down onto the bed and slept for about 3 hours before venturing out to the city for dinner.  The front desk called a cab for us, and he took us right to the restaurant and waited while we ate.  What service! When we were back at the hotel, he only charged us for what the route would have cost, not for his wait, so we gave him a little tip.  He deserved it, the other guy, not so much.

Matt and I decided to get up early the next morning to go to the ruins, so we could 1) miss the heat and 2) get back to Amman with enough time to get ready for the week.  We woke up at 6:50 and fell back asleep until 8 (which was when we were planning on leaving). We eventually made it to the city by about 9:15 walked around the ruins until 11.  At 11:15 we wanted to go see a Chariot Race reenactment, so we bought our tickets and waited for the show to start.  We agreed to meet our driver at 11:45 to go back to Amman, but we figured staying for half an hour was worth it.  By 11:35 the show had yet to start.  We decided to go back to the ticket man and ask for a refund, since it had already been 20 minutes and nothing had happened.  He said the show was about to start and it was only 5 minutes late anyway.  We looked at the sign, and they had sneakily changed the show time to 11:30.  We finally talked him into giving us a full refund for our tickets and met our driver to go back to Amman. 

We got back to Amman at about 1:00 or so, and he took us right to our separate houses, which was very convenient.  We debated whether we should take a bus or a cab because the prices were staggeringly different, but paying the extra 10 JD for the cab was definitely worth it.  

Overall, it was a long and tiring weekend, but I had an absolutely amazing time this weekend.  Jerash had incredibly beautiful ruins, and Umm Qais was worth the longer trip and terrible hotel room for its spectacular views, especially of the “homeland” Syria.  Seeing that meant more to me than anything we saw this weekend. It will be hard to beat that because of sentimental reasons, but next weekend we are going to Petra, so we will see how that compares!