Amman - Day 2 - Citadelia and trying to find some grass

Photo from yesterday's trip to see the Citadel

Day 2: Amman, Jordan

Being in the city remains an incredibly strange experience. Going to have to knuckle down and learn some colloquial even just for communication with taxi drivers, too many of the crucial words are different! The drivers themselves are usually fairly helpful, though this morning one tried to overcharge us fairly ludicrously because there was traffic up ahead. Having attempted to charge roughly 7 times what the fare should have been he relented to a mere double the price, despite the number displayed on his meter. Not so easily mugged off, I paid him 1 dinar (it said 83 cents (or equiv) on the meter) and got out of the car.

I Picked up my unlocked phone from Muhammad today (in your face Imogen, he hadn’t stolen it) and got a SIM which I can pay by the month. I met Muhammad yesterday who works about 10 minutes from where I live, he’s very nice and very tolerant with our use of Standard Arabic instead of colloquial – he kindly said that we could come back any time we wanted to practise speaking with him.

We also visited King Hussein’s Gardens in the East of the city. It was a bit of a shock (though it probably shouldn’t have been) to find that the gardens are entirely devoid of grass – though as Clara said “they’ve made quite a serious effort with the trees though haven’t they”. We were unsuccessful in finding the statue of King Hussein himself which Clara was keen to discover, however we did discover a peculiar compound at the rear of the gardens which was very efficiently screened from view – military, we decided.

Our visit to the gardens also included a trip to the Royal Automobile Museum which, though occasionally eclectic, was a charming homage to “His majesty the late King Hussein” as he was referred to on the 90% of exhibit placards on which he featured.

The only problem with being so far east today was the difficulty in finding a taxi to take us home since the taxis very rarely seem to pick up from the more major roads. It took us a 20 minute walk uphill before we were eventually whisked off home.

#TaxiDrivers #Colloquial #Jordan #Amman