The breakfast buffet was oh so yummy!! Pastries were just jumping on my plate! They had a guy cooking on a grill outside and I grabbed some breaded concoction covered in zahtar that was out of this world! How will I ever go home to my boring protein drinks?!
Savored our last meal on their beautiful patio.
Sadly, it was time to leave our luxury resort. We packed our bags and got on the bus for the 3 hour drive to Petra!
Full truth?
I didn't know what Petra was before this trip.
Even after looking it up, I was a bit confused. But people raved and it was supposedly a must see in the Middle East so count me in!
But first,
A gift shop to break up the long drive.
This was where I bought my Dead Sea mud mask! And a teeny tiny jar with colored sand that was somehow manipulated to create an image of a camel. I will tie a ribbon around it and it will be my Christmas tree ornament from Jordan!
This gift shop had the best view of all the gift shops haha!
PETRA
Petra was built in the 3rd century BC by the Nabataeans, who carved palaces, temples, tombs, storerooms and stables from the soft, sandstone cliffs. An earthquake in AD 555 is the most likely cause of the city's demise. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, but in 2007 it was voted one of the new 7 Wonders of the World.
But let's be honest, all we care about are what movies it's been in! You're probably already thinking of Indian Jones, The Last Crusade. But it's also featured in Arabian Nights, The Mummy Returns, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and more!
When we got there, our tour guide emphatically encouraged us to stick with him on his tour. He was going to take us to the Treasury and back. He said the Monastery is even bigger than the Treasury but it's much farther and you'd have to basically run there to make it back to the buses in time. We approached the ticket booth and Travis and I started debating. We would never come back to Petra. This is a once in a lifetime experience. Why wouldn't we shoot for the Monastery? Mike and Brenda were having the same thoughts. Again, our tour guide discouraged us. He made it sound like it was a bad idea and we probably wouldn't get back to the buses in time. But why not?! We had just run a marathon a couple months ago. Mike is big into bike racing and has even won the LOTAJA (Pronounced Low-ta-Ja) and Brenda used to run marathons, so they were in good shape. Time to make a decision was running out and we kept looking to them and them to us as excitement mounted. Finally we just went for it. We decided we were not going to leave this place until we had made it to the Monastery. We instantly started running. And smiling! I was pumped at the challenge. It is 3 1/2 miles to the Monastery. First, you go through a high-walled crack in the rock(a Sik). It reminded me of Antelope Canyon in Arizona. It was beautiful.
We only had to go 1.2 miles and then we saw it! The Treasury! I'm certain my jaw dropped.
It is IMPRESSIVE to be sure. They don't build 'em like that anymore! I was feeling all the Indian Jones vibes.
It is known locally as Al Khazneh. Carved out of iron-laden sandstone to serve as a tomb, the Treasury gets its name from the misguided local belief that an Egyptian pharaoh hid his treasure in the top urn.
We stopped for pictures but our mission wasn't complete! On we jogged!
It was the most interesting running trail you could imagine!
An ancient city!
There were carvings and facades in the rock all around us. Tourists and donkeys and natives selling their wares lined the path.
It was so fun doing this with Mike and Brenda. We took turns snapping pictures of each other and checking the time to make sure we were pacing ourselves. It became trail running as the path now escalated uphill with stairs off and on. I was in a dress, btw, but thankfully had good shoes on! We were sweating, but it honestly wasn't bad at all. I thought it was fun. And after a week of not exercising, it felt good to get the blood pumping. Little did we know when we were training for the marathon in February that we were also training for the Monastery!
This theater could hold about 8,500 people! It boggles my brain to think you could have been born in the 1st century and lived in a stone city. This was their actual life! Gosh I hope after I die, I get to see footage of this.
The end was all stairs! 800 of them to be exact. I don't remember exactly how long it took us, but I think we jogged for about 1 1/2 hours before we finally arrived!
THE MONASTERY!!!!
We did it! We may as well have won the Tour de France we were so proud of ourselves.
Absolutely incredible structure.
There was a small hill we climbed to get a better picture.
I was surprised that gift shops followed the path all the way to the Monastery. I was happy to buy a Lemon-Lime Coke on the way back down. Yum! Never heard of this flavor before. It was divine.
Now the pressure was mostly off, but we still needed to make it back to the buses and there were lots of places to explore in-between! So we kept jogging!
This is called The Great Temple! No one knows for sure if it was used for religious or administrative purposes. Again, I got lots of questions in the after-life!
An inside look of a room beyond the facade.
When we got back to the Treasury, the sun was in a different place and the lighting was so cool.
We made it back to the buses in plenty of time! We were SO GLAD we went for it and didn't listen to the dumb tour guide. He just wanted our tips I'm sure. Now we can say we've seen all you can see at Petra and leave satisfied. I grabbed a really yummy wrap in a gift shop on our way out. Good thing too, because we didn't realize the night we had coming up.
Some people in our group were catching flights out that night but ours wasn't until morning. So we had to stay at the Amman Airport Hotel.
EW, DAVID!!
It was truly the most disgusting place I've even stayed. I knew it wasn't going to be the best place based on reviews I had read before the trip, but I was not prepared for how run down and flea bitten it really was.
We needed a shower, badly, but it felt like a truck stop shower. I kept my flip flops on. I had packed a pillowcase cover but that did not ease my mind much at all. I checked for bed bugs and at least didn't see anything crawling. I laid my towel over the sheet and laid down like a board, staring at the ceiling. I didn't sleep a wink. I couldn't relax. I would have rather slept on the airport floor. The night dragged on forever until finally we could get up and get the he$% out of there.
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