Off to Amman

We had a great night in Le Passage. This appears to be a boutique luxury hotel, unique to Cairo. As we travel, the Coronavirus seems to be raging around us. Some tourists have returned from Egypt with the virus but no Canadians and although a Nile River boat reported 12 cases near Luxor, they were all crew. Today we left our Egyptian travels behind and flew to Amman Jordan.

As usual, we were early for our EgyptAir flight and had a nice wait after the obligatory two pat downs. I thought the contrast of Burger King to the Hippopotamus Cafe was a classic case of east meets west. Of course all communications are in Arabic first.

This was pretty much just a transit day for us, with no touring until tomorrow. Our flight path took us over The Red Sea and totally avoided Israeli air space. Check out the jog in the flight path.

By 2:30 we were in our bus with our new female guide, Oria. She is part of a new project in Jordan to provide more women with tourism jobs.

Hallelujah, we have returned to civilization! After the chaos of Cairo, this place is like Eden. They have nice houses, nice cars and they don’t drive like maniacs.

We checked into the Amman Landmark Hotel in pretty much the city centre. The rooms here are huge and gorgeous.

They have a happy hour here that has 2 for 1 drinks so we be heading there before dinner.

The prime commerce of Jordan appears to be tourism so of course the people are super friendly.

The 2for1 yielded the above find of Jordanian wine - not bad. So the biblical lands who featured wine stories can indeed still make pretty good wine.