I’m going into the lion’s den, as they say. Though via a safe bubble. The lion’s den is the Middle East, the safe bubble is Jordan. It is one of the few Arab countries that haven’t seen any violent uprisings during the Arab Spring. At this time last year I had just safely returned from Tunisia, the country that had started it all.
I will meet my cousin Charlotte in Amman and we will go to Israel for a few days. She’ll fly home from there and I will return to Jordan for a few more days before I fly out again from Amman. No bicycles involved.
Easy flight to Amman, via Paris, today.
On the bus from the airport to Amman proper I met Omar, a Libyan. He’s buying cars in Jordan and exporting them to Libya. He proudly showed me dozens of pictures of his homeland, including many photos of himself and his friends (“this guy died, that guy died”) fighting against Gaddafi.
For the first night I had booked a room in the same hotel my cousin and her group were staying in. On check-in I was told that even though they had received my reservation they were fully booked. Though they said they had organized a room for me in another hotel and they’d cover the price difference. So I got relocated to a 4-star hotel. Not too bad, ey?