Jordan

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A country with an arid and dry beauty, with a modern and open-minded Muslim culture and full of friendly people. Wherever you go in the country you always have the feeling of being in the desert, with their cities and buildings in dry earth color. The country has breathtaking sceneries and a rich heritage and there you can visit one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the lovely Petra.

The country is very small which makes travelling easy and pleasant. You can cross from north to south ain only five hours and the roads have excellent quality. With sights scattered throughout the country, you can go from one side or the other without getting tired. It just looks like you are visiting another place in the next neighborhood. If you want to see the whole country, 10 or 12 days is more than enough.

What was worth it: The lovely Petra, the tranquility of Dana valley and the stunning landscape of Wadi Rum desert.
What was not so paid off: Aqaba (you will be disappointed with this beach town and if you really want to enjoy the beach need to go for resort for foreigners).

A few tips:

• TRANSPORTATION: Since everything is very close is easy to travel, but unfortunately public transport is not very reliable, especially for the most isolated places (such as Wadi Rum, Dana, Dead Sea). Often there is only one bus a day and others only leave when the bus is full and you can spend hours waiting. The easier trails by bus are between Amman, Petra and Aqaba, for other places there is always the option of private taxi that if shared with more people will not be expensive, it is convenient and comfortable.
• ENJOYING THE BEACH: Unfortunately, Aqaba, the only beach town of Jordan will let you down and has nothing great to offer. If you are only visiting Jordan get ready to pay more for quality accommodation and try to stay in a hotel with private beach. But if you are also planning to go to Egypt, do not waste time in Aqaba, save these days to spend more time in the paradisiac Dahab, which is a perfect place to enjoy the sea, to relax and do top diving.
• CLIMATE: The best option is to go in fall or spring, when temperatures are mild and does not rain much. Avoid visiting in summer, which we did. It gets very hot and it is difficult to visit places in the middle of the afternoon. In the desert of Wadi Rum it was so hot that we didn’t enjoy as much as e could.

Our itinerary (10 days)

We flew from Moscow, Russia, to the capital Amman, from where we did a short daytrip to visit the Roman city of Jerash. From Amman we took a touristic bus to Petra and spent four days relaxing in the region, with one day visiting the tranquil valley of Dana. From there we took a minivan to the desert of Wadi Rum, spending the night in the desert, and then we went by taxi to Aqaba. Disappointed with the beach town, we were there just for one day to make our visa to Egypt and we left by land, crossing Israel to get to Egypt. After visiting Egypt and Israel, we returned to Jordan by the border of King Hussein with Israel and spent another night in Amman to catch our flight to Istanbul, Turkey.

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