On our 2nd weekend in Jordan, Anthon's co-worker was so kind again, to take us to Madaba, Mount Nebo (where the Prophet Moses saw the promised land and died) and Jordan River.
On our ride to Madaba, we passed soooo many olive trees!
We loved the scenery- it's sooo different from what we are used to see around us back home.
Madaba is a city near Amman that is famous for its mosaics. In this church, you can find the largest mosaic map of Jerusalem.
We found this quite interesting: A supermarket in deep Jordan with a sign saying "We speak German".
We then went to Mt. Nebo.
The view from Mt. Nebo was beautiful in its own beauty! I had never seen a desert landscape like that.
Restoring some old mosaics.
After that, we went to Jordan River, which was pretty cool. It's kind of funny that both the Israelis and the Jordanians claim to have THE spot, where Jesus was baptized. I don't care where exactly the spot was, but it was still neat to go to the river.
Excited to see Jordan river.
As you can see in this picture, I got a really bad sunburn while I went swimming at a pool. 4 months later, my skin is still recovering from it. I even got blisters all over my back, arms and cleavage that I couldn't really sleep for a week. It was so bad that I couldn't even move like normal for about 1,5 weeks. It took 4 weeks for the burnt skin to come off. I normally don't get sunburns, but I've learned my lesson: Don't mess with the desert sun! ;-)
This is the spot, where people can be baptized today. On the opposite side is Israel.
I think, I prefer getting baptized in the baptismal fond at the church. Due to the heat, the water is pretty muddy.
We even were the witnesses of a couple of baptisms.
It was kind of weird though, to see the people just walk into the water with their tourist outfits and get baptized by a guy, who was also just wearing typical tourist clothes.... and then they didn't have any dry clothes with them, so they just walked back to the bus in their soaking wet outfits.
On our ride back home:
Banana plants! Who would have thought!?
We stopped at a guy's fruit orchard and got some fresh grapes from the vine. It was pretty neat to get them so fresh.
As a "thank you" for taking the time to drive us around for 2 days, we treated Anthon's co-worker and his wife to dinner at the restaurant Tawaheen al-Hawa in Amman. We had a great dinner with some really good food. It was lovely to get to know his wife, after he had told us so much about her and their four sons. His wife studied English many years ago, so communication was luckily no problem. It was really neat to learn more about the culture, religion and being a woman in Jordan.
After that, we got some ice cream.
Somebody is excited :-)
We loved how we could just sit there for 3 or 4 hours, talk and enjoy the atmosphere without waiters coming every 5 minutes that ask us how the food is/was, if we wanted dessert and other drinks, the bill, etc.
That's something that Anthon and I don't like about eating out in the US. Waiters in the US always let us feel that they want us to leave as soon as we are done, and they look kind of disappointed when we get an appetizer and 1 main entree instead of 2 main entrees, or when we just drink water and no alcohol, or when we don't get a dessert- so annoying!
I really like that in Jordan (and in Germany) it's more about socializing, catching up with friends and relaxing than just eating and leaving the restaurant as soon as you are done.
