In Which Hot Peppers Cause Consternation

The next morning Rimaan slept till 10:45am, so I just lay on the mattress next to his (we slept on mattresses he dragged into the living room late at night while Jennifer shared a room with his sister) until he woke up and we had breakfast. One of the biggest parts of Arab hospitality is that they feed you CONSTANTLY. All night we were plied with fruits (which are dessert foods here) cakes, nuts, bread, and all sorts of food. Breakfast was a feast of pita bread, yogurt (which I politely avoided while pretending to eat) meat that was sort of like bologna, and leftover cake from last night, served with Arabic hot chocolate (which is a million times better than American hot chocolate.) I got the sense while in Jordan that Arab tastes in drinks run really sweet. Everything from their tea to their soda to their fruit punch is at least twice as sweet as you would expect from American drinks. The only exception is the Turkish coffee, which is blacker than anything you find in America and which my dad would probably love.

Later that morning we said our goodbyes to Rimaan and his family and rejoined our group for a lunch at the Al-Quds restaurant. (Al-Quds is the Arabic term for Jerusalem, and the restaurant was full of photos of the city and specifically of the Dome of The Rock) The food there was delicious (I had lamb, but lots of people ordered Mensaaf, the national dish of Jordan, which is basically meat and rice served with goat yogurt.) Also served was pita bread with hummus, which is the Arab analogue for bread and butter and which I am wholly addicted to.

After lunch we met up with Yusef, a local guide to take a walking tour of Amman. We visited an ancient Roman bath house, of which only one wall remains following a huge earthquake some years ago. Here Yusef explained the history of several different Arab kingdoms during the Middle Ages. We also toured a Roman theatre which would have seated several thousand people, and in fact, still does, as it is sometimes used on special occasions for events. The biggest attraction we saw was the Citadel of Amman, which started out as an Ammonite fortress on a mountain (it’s actually the confirmed site of Uriah the Hittite’s death on the orders of David when David wanted to marry Bathsheba.) and was successively built upon by the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Moors. We passed the Temple of Hercules, a Moorish palace and the remnants of a Mosque before visiting the Archeological Museum, which contained pieces from the Early Bronze Age through more recent history.

After the tour we returned to our apartments to pack for our five day excursion to Israel the next morning.