p-p-p-Petra (Jordan trip first half)

The substitution Mt. Nebo lookout - read below - since I just stole this pic off Rachael's blog.

Finally! I'm getting to the first half of our Jordan trip! We were only there for 4 days, which felt really short compared to our 8 day Egypt trip. It was packed just as tightly though with bus travel and historic sites. 

Our first stop was at Mt. Nebo where Moses looked out over the promised land for the first time and recall the story of the brazen serpent. Sadly, it had rained earlier and they closed the actual lookout, which is where they have the brazen serpent sculpture, because it was too muddy. We tried to talk the guards into letting us go since we're only here once, but had no luck. So next best is to take a picture by the memorial rock thing. :)

Our next stop was Madaba! There is lots of construction in Madaba to improve the roads and things. It seems like it will be really nice once it's all done. Here is a shot of the downtown area in Madaba though. 
Here in Madaba we visited a Greek Orthodox church that had the oldest mosaic map of the Middle East area. It was really cool and there are a lot of symbolic pictures within it to describe different areas. 
The bus ride continues....

I just thought this was a really cool shot that I got as we were passing in the bus. Clotheslines are on top of every house roof all over the Middle East, especially in the more rural areas. 

As we were driving to Petra we saw snow too! Sorry, I forgot a picture, but it wasn't good anyway since it was dark. I never imagined I would see snow in the Middle East probably because I just associate deserts and heat with the area, but I did see it!

We stayed the night in the Petra Palace Hotel just a 5 minute walk from Petra! It was a pretty nice hotel, but was under construction, so it took Kara and I a while to find our room in some random wing that you had to take the elevator up to the 3rd floor and then go up stairs and then walk across to another building. Luckily, we found a person who worked there and he led us in the right direction after our sad attempt to find the room.

When we got there that night we walked down the street to this one shop and David Archuleta's music video was on the TV in the shop. We were in Jordan and David Archuleta was on TV.....crazy!

Jordan is a kingdom, formally the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The current king is King Abdullah II who is the one on the right in the picture below. The Jordanians take great pride in their king and there are pictures of him all over the place that you see driving around. Compared to Egypt Jordan is a much cleaner, more organized, nicer country and I felt very safe everywhere. I think the reason for this is because it's a kingdom.

Camels are awesome, though they smell rank!
This is Emma and me towards the start of our 3 mile walk into Petra. Most of it was shaded and it was so cold that I'm wearing both of my jackets in this picture. It was so cool though because our guide pointed out all these carvings along the way. Many were small religious shrines. There were also gutters carved about about waist height that ran along the walls and actually would filter the water as it ran through. 

Petra means rock. Clever eh?
Here is our first site of the main temple/treasury of PETRA!
This is me in front of it. That just gives you a feel of the size of the building because you can barely see me down there when I tried to get the whole thing in the picture. It was AMAZING! There is so much detail in every piece of it and you can see the notches in the stone where the Nabataeans set up scaffolding to carve back in the ancient days. This part of Petra is the most famous and well preserved because the rain blows from the other direction, so it's more protected from the elements. 
Here is an old amphitheater that they also carved. It was used for temple rituals and religious practices and worship. It was originally smaller, but when the Romans came through they continued to carve and expanded it so that it fit about 4,000 people!
Petra is a huge expanse of land. Though it used to be home to about 20,000 Nabataeans somehow it was a lost area to the rest of the world until the early 1800's when an archaeologist who lived among the Arabs was allowed into the area because he was disguised as an Arab. The Bedoin (nomads) people inhabited the whole area and supposedly it was lucky to get out alive. After it was discovered the government relocated all the Bedoin people to create a national park area for visitors. I doubt that no Bedoins live there now because there are so many little caves and places to hide out in. 

Since it's so big we didn't get to visit everything. One of the other amazing things we saw though was the monastery, which is pretty hidden in another upper valley area that we had to hike to. We continued to hike even higher and the view of it was amazing! Below is the monastery.

Like always there are a ton of locals trying to sell you things everywhere and many little shops set up. I didn't even really bring money, so that I wouldn't spend it. Here was our favorite shop - the "Why Not? Shop". They come up with some clever English names. :)
The picture below I put in to just illustrate things you'll see just walking around Petra. Everywhere you look there seems to be something carved out of the stone mountains. Can you imagine a whole civilization living here? SO COOL! I picked out my house too and I'm planning on moving in next year.