Dan: The day has arrived – the start of our 3 month holiday!

We leave London bound for Jordan, where we have an overnight stay in Amman before our connecting flight to Delhi tomorrow night.

The flight from London to Jordan is 6 hours, and we’re a bit apprehensive about it after reading bad reviews about the airline, Royal Jordanian Airlines, online.

Karin: Thankfully the flight was not the horror that we had feared. We picked it from the bargain basement of flights – a £350 deal with Royal Jordanian including a 24-hour transfer in Jordan. Despite some bad reviews on TripAdvisor.com the service was pretty good and even the tiny new-born who screamed much of the way through the flight had little effect on our spirits. Whilst on the plane Daniel and I began plotting our whistle-stop tour to Petra – we weren’t sure if we could do it.

Dan: Karin mentioned that Petra was one of the must-see things in the Middle East, and we endeavored that if we find a way to go visit it, we would. Petra is an ancient city carved into the stone walls of a valley, and was hidden from Western view until the 1800’s. According to everything we’d read, we needed at least 3 days to see Petra properly, and that was assuming we were in Petra to start with! Getting to Petra and back again in a single day was going to be our biggest problem. Buses (the cheapest option) were out of the question, as there were only 3 a week, and none on Tuesdays (the one day we had in Jordan).

Taxi looked like the only option, providing we could agree on a reasonable rate.

We arrived at Queen Alia airport in Amman, Jordan at 11:30pm.

The first idea that we were in the Middle East (and very close to Israel and Iraq) was the array of advertisements for armored cars and limousines which apparently were “perfect for traveling in Iraq” according to the poster. Hmmm….!

The transfer desk told us that there was a bus outside to take us to the hotel – we said how would we recognize it, and he said, “Easy – it’s the only bus out there”.

We went outside… and discovered there were 4 buses! And none of them were the transfer bus. Hmm, welcome to Jordan…

Still, eventually it arrived, and we were in our room and asleep by 1:00am, ready to be up at 5:00am to track down a taxi to take us to Petra…