Jordan Holidays
Jordan Holidays
Sunday 09th - Tuesday 18th August 2009
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| 09:54:34 Interesting | 09:56:12 Typical Jordan truck | 11:46:56 The Adrian Arch in Jerash |
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| 12:21:11 The main Forum in the Jerash Decalopolis | 12:22:30 The ruins are roman, this is the best preserved Roman city in the Middle East. | 12:24:43 Poetic shot at the theatre stairs. |
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| 12:27:26 Chiara and some steps. | 12:28:24 Kids playing with drums. | 12:37:47 More columns, outlining the Decumano (one of the main streets in Roman cities). |
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| 12:49:27 Shot at a colum in the Artemis Temple. | 12:51:19 These colums have been left like these for centuries, and still, despite looking quite unstable they are still there. | 12:57:05 Artemis Steps from the top. |
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| 13:05:39 Interesting... | 13:09:06 There another sign! | 13:10:49 Jordan family and the ruins. |
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| 13:11:04 This is meant to be a well. | 13:36:40 A Roman "show" took place... | 13:40:59 Chiara in her typical habitat. |
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| 13:41:09 Some women with burka and chador. | 14:37:58 Cofee (or tea) guy! | 17:33:27 Palms over the Dead Sea. |
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| 18:00:22 Me and Chiara with the Dead Sea Sunset. | 09:38:55 Dead Sea and Hamamat Ma'in are far below the sea level. | 10:26:01 Pool in Hamamat Ma'in, 50 degrees celsius, quite unbeareable. |
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| 10:33:48 One of the waterfalls at the spa, too hot to bathe in winter though. | 10:35:24 Close shot... | 10:43:33 This other waterfall, being taller, was ok to dive under. Quite an experience! |
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| 10:58:59 There you go! | 11:00:47 Inside the waterfall there is a sort of natural sauna room... | 11:00:55 Waterfall from the inside! |
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| 11:12:36 And that's it, the taller waterfall... | 12:04:28 Camel. | 12:06:49 Female on camel. |
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| 12:08:25 Female and adventorous type on camels. | 12:58:19 Chiara and the Jordan River. | 13:04:10 This is meant to be the Bapthism site of Jesus. |
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| 13:19:47 Ortodox Church. | 13:20:48 Going closer to Jorda River. | 13:21:25 Jordan Flag |
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| 15:56:09 Dead Sea: Women dressed up having a swim (or a float, rather)... | 16:22:04 Me covered in Dead sea Mud pretending to eat a piece of salt! | 16:30:50 Nice shot of a herd of sheep. |
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| 16:31:49 Part of a truck? | 15:50:33 Chiara floating and reading!! | 15:55:02 Undoubtly a VERY PECULIAR experience... |
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| 16:20:56 Chiara covered in mud displays the salt rock that I found. | 09:36:32 Madaba, mosaics in the church. | 09:37:12 Madaba: The mosaic represents all the middle east, it's a huge map. This is meant to be Jerusalem. |
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| 09:44:47 Close up of a fish! | 09:47:18 The Church itself. | 09:51:57 Streets in Madaba. |
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| 11:12:21 Main mosque in Madaba. | 11:20:48 Shoe shop?! | 12:16:17 Butcher!! (or fly breeder, whatever strikes your fancy)... |
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| 12:16:52 You can buy a chicken and they will slaughter it in front of you to take home. It doesn't get fresher than this!! | 12:20:47 Cathedral in Madaba, looks great but we could not enter. | 12:21:06 Poetic shot at this door. |
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| 12:22:35 Nice flower there (daisy!?). | 13:26:19 Mount Nebo: This is where Moses arrived and was shown Cannan, the promised land. He died there as God did not allowed him to reach Cannan. | 13:26:32 Mount Nebo: There, this is what Moses saw a looooooooooong time ago. |
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| 13:25:42 Mount Nebo: Well, interesting.... :D | 16:23:36 Going to Karak, interesting rock formations. | 17:18:16 The valley that we crossed was truly impressive! |
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| 17:44:49 A tree. | 17:45:08 The King's Highway. | 08:09:43 Kitchen at our hotel in Karak! |
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| 08:52:44 Our self appointed guide in the Karak Castle. | 08:55:17 One of the inner rooms. The castle was originally made by the Crusaders, later was conquered by Saladdhin. | 09:06:00 Chiara and the tunnels. |
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| 09:11:49 More windows. | 09:16:01 The bakery (apparently). | 09:20:49 Our SELF APPOINTED guide leaving... |
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| 09:33:11 The castle is really hard to take on three sides. Shame that one side has got a convenient hill right in front, from where Saladdhin attacked... | 09:37:37 Walls were 6mts thick to withstand the attacks with catapults. | 09:38:33 One of the very well protected sides... |
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| 09:41:32 Going up some stairs. | 09:42:31 Me climbing on the walls, Chiara forced me to go down eventually... | 09:42:19 Not before I took some pictures. |
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| 09:45:45 There, this is the 400mts drop from the place where I was climbing... | 09:58:17 Water slides. | 10:01:26 Art. |
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| 11:24:59 Fuel station. | 12:14:36 A guy walking by... | 12:35:05 Falafell stand. |
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| 13:27:43 This is the natural reserve of Dana. | 13:13:58 Another BIG tree. | 14:01:48 Dana village. |
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| 14:03:02 Some parts are still abandoned. | 14:11:43 The valley. | 14:28:17 The village from top. |
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| 14:32:50 Me and Chiara with the valley. | 14:39:42 This kid was performing for us with his donkey!! :D | 14:39:51 Beautiful! |
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| 15:57:18 I love this shot, we were driving so it's NOT set up at all, it was quite hard to make but :D | 15:04:17 Shobak Castle. | 15:21:11 Chiara and some doors... |
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| 15:23:45 More ruins at the Shobak castle. | 05:30:54 Me and Chiara at 6:30 AM in Petra to avoid all the tourists and see the site in peace (for a while at least). | 05:36:57 The Djin tanks. |
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| 05:39:27 The Nabateans dug up all the mountains to make their monuments/houses. It's truly impressive. | 05:41:57 Getting to the Treasure... | 05:44:42 Entrance of the Siq. |
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| 05:51:09 The Siq it's not a Canyon, because there is no river crossing it. It's an actual opening in the rock, a sort of wound throug the mountain! | 05:52:13 Benches... | 05:55:25 A votive niche. |
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| 06:00:07 Chiara reading the information about the Siq. | 06:01:20 More Siq. | 06:05:51 YES! |
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| 06:08:01 Some sculptures were here, you can barely see them but they depicted a guy leading some camels. | 06:11:59 IT HIM! My TREASURE:.... | 06:13:03 Whip ready, Indiana Jones approaches the Treasure. |
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| 06:13:22 There you go! We were the only tourists around! :D | 06:14:23 Well not just us, but I think that there were only 6 people with us there at that time. | 06:16:29 Details of the Treasure. |
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| 06:17:51 The Treasure is one of the Marvels of the Modern World. | 06:22:18 The Siq from the Treasure. | 06:28:00 Inside the Treasure I did not find any trial or Graal story to follow... There are just three rooms, here is one. |
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| 06:29:04 The ceiling. | 06:37:19 Chiara managed to get a FREE TEA there... One of the few free things that we got in Petra... | 06:55:07 The rocks are not painted. It's the sediments that gave them these beautiful colours... |
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| 06:57:42 We thenstarted walking towards the Monastry. | 06:59:05 Getting ready for a day of work selling stuff... | 07:04:34 We loved this little cat, he ate a Digestive Biscuit with its pawns, pretty much like a mouse would do!! |
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| 07:28:24 One of the royal tombs. | 07:30:55 Some of the sediments that I was talking about... STUNNING! | 07:53:52 See? |
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| 07:33:27 Chiarina and the rocks. | 08:18:19 Temple of Jupiter. | 08:54:38 Walinking towards the Monastery is not easy, there are a lot of steps to climb (a good 35/45 minutes of them). |
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| 09:18:44 But the climb is TOTALLY WORTH IT! | 09:19:08 Chiara. | 09:20:18 Indiana Lox. |
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| 09:33:15 Some goats. | 09:36:24 I liked this hole in the mountain! | 09:23:27 Since we were not tired enough we climbed even more to take this shot! |
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| 10:12:31 While resting this donkey approached and we fed him some dates. | 10:33:56 Some details of the Monastery. | 11:28:35 Front shot! Beautiful. |
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| 11:28:57 Resting... | 12:02:32 Chiara in her typical habitat trying not to buy too much... | 12:03:00 No I DON'T WANT IT! (all these pictures are stolen as the women do not like to be featured in pictures all thta much)... |
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| 12:46:15 Royal tombs from distance. | 13:26:46 Going away I took another shot at the Siq + Treasure.... Nicceeee... | 13:27:11 And one more at the Siq. |
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| 19:51:31 At night we joined the "Petra by Night" walk (3 kilometers to reach the Treasure). | 20:12:50 Though the site was really beautiful with only these lamps the whole thing left us a bit unsatisfied. | 21:11:13 More Treasure by night. |
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| 21:25:58 The Siq with lamps... | 21:40:07 And more of it. | 06:52:43 King of Jordan. His picture is everywhere! |
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| 07:10:17 Second day at Petra saw us going through the Wadi Muthlib, a special walk. | 07:34:56 The walk follows the path of the river and it's quite hard in some points... | 07:48:10 This is just the beginning... |
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| 07:51:45 here it starts getting better :P | 07:52:46 More sediments, it looks like if someone painted them. | 07:55:15 Wow... |
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| 08:12:23 A turn in this Wadi, you can tell that water flows here normally. | 08:16:16 Chiara at one of these bends. | 08:18:29 Hey there!! :D |
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| 08:41:57 Nabatean door, unfinished... | 08:42:30 But look at the colours of this rock... It really looks like painted! | 08:50:21 More arches dug by wind and rain. |
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| 08:54:12 A secondary tomb on the way to the view of the Treasury from the top. | 09:19:49 Theatre from the top of the hill. | 09:10:47 Us resting... |
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| 09:35:58 Me and Chiara with a side view at the Treasure. | 09:49:25 That's him! beautiful. | 10:05:40 And again. |
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| 10:06:47 Chiara didn't want me to venture to the cliff because it was a bit dangerous, but this time I didn't listen! :D | 10:58:21 This is the most beautiful shot of the trip. Stolen shot again, the little kid was rejoicing at having some coins in his hand. | 11:06:35 Here the Berbers sell bits of the coloured stones that you can admire all around the site. |
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| 11:06:44 More Nabatean tombs. | 11:36:39 The Lion's temple. | 18:16:50 Sunset at Petra. |
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| 18:40:40 A cake shop! | 10:57:47 Wadi Rum: Here we are in the desert, but the first stop was the natural spring! | 11:01:07 Peppermint grows wild here! |
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| 11:04:01 Desert bug... | 11:36:05 A tree in the desert... | 11:38:11 Making tea the berber way |
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| 11:41:53 Camel... | 12:01:50 There is a canyon with some Nabatean's writings.. | 12:06:55 Here there are... |
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| 12:10:57 The sand changed colour from yellowish to red... nice... | 12:21:24 Chiara on a dune. | 12:28:11 From the top of the dune. |
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| 12:32:50 Chiara again... | 12:26:15 Me climbing down.. | 12:28:37 I wanted to pretend to be in distress, but in reality the picture looks really crap! :D |
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| 12:34:37 Chiara doing the catwalk on the dune! :D | 12:59:02 Our jeep for the day, it kept stopping and the guide had to repair it at least three times. He said that with some metal wire and a SPOON he can repair ANY car... Oh well... | 13:29:25 Trees in the desert... |
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| 13:30:10 Making tea. | 15:58:38 There are several stone "bridges" in Wadi Rum. | 16:03:37 We climbed on the top of this one. |
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| 16:06:21 Parts of the climb were not extremely comfortable, but hey, that's the adeventure part of the trip right? | 15:59:28 There you go, us there on top. | 16:03:38 And us climbing down.. |
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| 16:04:48 Some parts were not easy but... | 16:29:47 Wells of rainwater in the desert. They were almost completely dried up. | 16:31:31 But we managed to get some water. This is the American girlfriend of our guide, she came with us, it was a very good ride around the desert all together! |
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| 16:38:16 Chiara got driving (note the guy is laughing his head off)... :D | 17:01:52 Another bridge. | 17:03:21 Chiara in the bidge... :P |
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| 17:12:49 Chicken and Egg stones! | 17:13:24 Our guide is making drawings in the sand, with the sand, quite impressive... | 17:14:27 There you go... |
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| 17:16:01 This is the sand, up close and personal. | 17:44:26 Getting ready for the sunset. | 17:45:43 Lizard trails. |
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| 17:47:59 Quite interesting rocky formation. | 17:50:10 Getting ready for more tea... | 18:17:33 Sunset in the desert. |
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| 18:44:29 I swear that I did not touch the picture, these colours are natural. | 04:45:35 Sunrise in the desert, 5:00 Am. | 04:50:33 Notice that the moon phases don't go from left to right, but from top to bottom. |
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| 05:00:37 More sunrise. | 05:06:58 We slept in this berber tent. | 06:08:45 Lovely desert cat, she came begging for food... |
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| 06:09:43 Typical instrument and vase. | 06:40:30 Chiara getting out of the tent... | 07:21:54 Nice little camel. |
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| 07:53:05 Ah, beware of the camel... | 07:43:59 I loved this setup here, so when we were driving away from Wadi Rum I stopped the car to take this pic... | 07:44:44 More sand, finer... |
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| 21:02:47 In Aquaba at our resort. | 21:22:27 Pools by night. | 11:42:44 That would be me in the day. |
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| 14:45:38 And Chiara. | 14:46:18 One of our favourite pools at the hotel. |
