EmilyRose7

By EmilyRose7

Roman Amphitheater

Today I ventured out to downtown Amman (Wasat Al-Ballad) area to trek (and it was a trek) up the Roman Amphitheater with one of my friends from Qasid, Colette. It is beautiful and grand. Has an amazing view of Amman and the Citadel at the top of the hill from the top of the Amphitheater. We had the original mission of starting our day at the National Museum that just opened and were then head to the Amphitheater. Since both of us are in Level 1 Arabic and beginners, we knew that is was going to be an adventure and that more likely then not we were not going to actually end up where we wanted to.

The thing about taxi's here is that the street signs and names are new to Amman and so taxi drivers never know street names....ever. They know landmarks or you can give them directions specifically street by street as you're turning down them. So, if you don't have a well-known landmark near where you want to go or know exactly how t get there (which we had neither today) then more often then not, you don't end up where you want to go. After several drivers said they have no idea where this museum is, we found a driver with good english that said he knew the museum and would take us.

After about a 15 minute drive he said we arrived. We saw a little building that said tourist information so we thought we were part of the lucky few and arrived at our museum. We paid the driver and went to the tourist information desk to get ready to go in the museum. He explained quickly that the were not at the museum, the building behind him was not it, but behind that building was the Roman Amphitheater. So, not as planned, but still worked!

We walked around the Traditional museum there, went into the "sister Amphitheater," a super cute little baby Amphitheater next to it and viewed the columns and climbed up the Amphitheater to take a crazy amount of pictures. Myself, having a huge fear of heights realized pretty quickly that the amphitheater aid crazy steep, not railings of anything and the tiniest steps ever to put your feet on to. I felt ill and wanted to die at the idea of hiking up that thing, but we were there...so it must be done.

Colette doesn't even have a fear of heights but thought the whole thing was pretty terrifying. We slowly made our way up taking little breaks to moan and freak out over how were were going to ever get down as well as making jokes about what would happen if you were to tumble down it. We agreed that an escalator or elevator would be a fantastic investment for the Jordanian Government to make and we will be the first ones to sign that petition.

I will go back there because it is pretty amazing, probably won't be climbing it, but I'll hang out in the first 5 rows or so. I desperately want to have a picnic on those steps, but I feel like thats probably not allowed. Anyways, we spent the rest of the day walking through the street markets, shopping for DVD's and then went to Jafra's for lunch downtown where we met up with Brandon, another fellow Qasider.

We ate amazing food, jugged a bunch of water and even spoiled ourselves with a soda. Eventually finished out shopping and decided we were exhausted and should possibly study a bit before class starts up with a new week tomorrow, so headed back to our places. My roommate Kendra and I made an awesome dinner and watched some TV on my laptop. All and all, a pretty darn good day here in Amman.

(I'm currently downloading pics to flickr of the Amphitheater. Bunch on there now and i'll finish downloading tomorrow.)

Flickr:http://www.flickr.com/photos/90572684@N08/sets

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