Evidently shaking the dust from your sandals is a useful skill - 25 & 26 April 2009

The Amman airport provides a welcome respite. We're able to get Starbucks and Cinnabon before our flight.

The flight is on a surprisingly nice airplance - basically the worst air service in the world is US Domestic (although that one experience with Iberia was pretty disappointing). They even let you use your cell phone on board the plane.

Having been "in-country" now for a couple of weeks the Cairo airport isn't as overwhelming this time and we're able to get a taxi to the Sheraton for 70 LE. The car is nice, but Jen describes it as Mr. Toad's wild ride.

The Sheraton, though, turns out to be a disappointment. We start off on a smoking floor and when we try to change are given attitude. Then, when trying to get internet, I'm told that it's 90 LE per day, but they have to send a guy up to set it up - and the guy won't give it to me for less than 200 LE. Overnight exactly 0 TV shows manage to download, and only 23% of our pictures manage to upload - so it's both slow and expensive.

Then, when I arrange the taxi to the airport I believe that it will cost 119 LE (which is admittedly stupid on my part, but hey, I'm sleep addled). Instead, it's 190 LE - and the guy seems put out that he's not getting a tip for charging me almost 3x what it cost to get from the airport to the hotel yesterday.

I'm so frustrated and angry that I let the taxi driver have it. SavedBySherpa is a family blog, so we won't print what was said here - but let's just say I won't be going back to Egypt any time soon.

At least we're done. We're moving on to London and Amsterdam, and then home.

Winding down - 24 April 2009

One thing I neglected to mention in the last post - I broke my camera at the Dead Sea. I eventually got it working again (you'll see some pics from London and Amsterdam) but nothing more from the Middle East.

Today we visited the church of St. George in Madaba, to see the famous map of the Holy Land. It's a little awkward, though, because the church is still in use and we have to wait for the congregants to finish before we all crowd in.

A sure sign that my heart's not really into this - my journal says "Donut shop is closed :("

From Madaba we move on into Amman on a bus. It's a cloudy, chilly day and I'm actually cold, which is shocking.

In Amman we visit the museum where the Dead Sea Scrolls are kept. I expected to geek out over them - much like the manuscripts and scrolls in the Coptic museum, but it just wasn't that compelling. Much like the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, there's just too much history crammed into too little space.

Dinner tonight was at a restaurant named Don Quixote, and consists of the same basic food we've been eating for the last two weeks, but it's GOOD which is frustrating. It's not that they don't know how to make good food here, it's just that we're not getting it.

Our group has a final farewell in the bar at the hotel. "Dinner of 2.5 beers and French Fries."

Tomorrow we head back to Cairo on our own.

If the tingle means it's working, what does the burning mean? 23 April 2009

Today we visited the Dead Sea. I've heard stories about it all my life, but was still surprised. The biggest surprise is that they still call this thing a sea. To me that implies water of some sort. This is more accurately described as the Dead Slurry.

You walk out into the sea until you can't touch, and then you just float. It's literally impossible to submerge yourself. The "water" is so dense that you can assume a skydiver's pose (belly on the water, arms and legs in the air) on it. There's some important advice, here, though:

Watre, indeed. That stuff burns!!! While assuming said skydiver pose I managed to get some slurry up my nose. And that's what we call an ender.

Interesting note: Along the way we passed this rock formation:

This is supposedly Lot's wife. Yep, this is the point where I start referring to our time in Egypt and Jordan as Vacation Bible School.

After the Dead Sea we visited Mount Nebo, also known as the mountain where Moses got his view of the promised land (but no entry, thanks to that pride issue). I'm intentionally not going to go into religion in this blog, but it's interesting to get our Muslim tour guide's perspective.

After Mount Nebo, it's time to shop. We're taken to a store where all of the goods are handcrafted by artisans - it doesn't take us long to figure out that we're not going to pay 200 Jordanian Dinar for a decorated ostrich egg. (I'll save you a trip to google - that's about $300 US). Stuff is so expensive that I just smirk at the salespeople. We've gone from Egypt, where everything is dirt cheap, to Jordan, where everything is more expensive than the US. At least it's good preparation for Europe.

Finally it's back to the hotel for yet another shower that floods the entire bathroom. Good times, good times...