Prev

Next

back in Cairoback in Cairo Everyone has been asking me if things feel or look any different here in Cairo after the revolution.  When I left, there were tanks in my neighborhood, a curfew, lots of gunfire, there was no internet, and Mubarak was still president.  Now, Mubarak is gone, the police are back on the streets, the tanks have rolled out,...

Read more

from ancient to medieval in Cairofrom ancient to medieval in Cairo On Tuesday we started our day with a cab ride to Tahrir to see the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities. We spent a few hours enjoying the Tutahnkamun exhibit, Akhenaten collection, and other ancient art and artifacts of Egypt. We then took a taxi to the Citadel. The views of the city were stunning. We...

Read more

weddles in luxorweddles in luxor This past week has been a whirlwind!  After seeing some sights around Cairo with Ryan, my parents arrived and we left for Luxor.  We arrived in Luxor around midday and decided to check out Luxor Temple in the afternoon sunlight.  It was incredible.  The city of Luxor creeps right up to the edges of these ancient sites,...

Read more

Mount SinaiMount Sinai Last weekend we went on a faculty trip to Mount Sinai.  After a 9 hour bus ride through barren, empty, desert, along the eastern coast of Egypt and across the Sinai Peninsula, we made it to Dahab where the best thing about our hotel was the coral reef meters from our room.  Another 2 hour bus ride through a forbidding...

Read more

Unfinished ObeliskUnfinished Obelisk Once we got to Aswan and after a crazy taxi experience that entailed some serious driver rivalry, keys stolen from the ignition, a chase involving a tire iron, and a group of tourists, ahem, us, quietly unloading our luggage and finding another cab... (yeah, I know, OH EGYPT!) Anyhow once we got to Aswan, we decided...

Read more

twitter

Um Qais and Jerash

Category : Jordan, Travel & Sightseeing

Day two in Jordan entailed visiting the ancient Roman sites Um Qais and Jerash.  I didn’t realize there were Roman ruins in Jordan before this trip, but there are.  Our tour guide was Jordanian and actually grew up in Um Qais.  Apparently some of the sites, including this one, were inhabited by locals until the 1980s when the government relocated the people living in them and established the ruins as archeological sites.

The above photo shows storefronts lining a road.  Our guide said that after he and his family were relocated to a nearby house, he worked with the archeologists excavating the ruins.  He said he spent a lot of time crawling through a tunnel looking for artifacts under what was previously his uncle’s house.

Some of the intricate carving remained beautifully intact.

The ruins in the lower left in the above photo are part of a Roman bath.

The lake in the background is Lake Tiberius, or the Sea of Galilee.  Israel is in the distance on the left, and Syria (Golan Heights) is on the right.

The hill on the horizon is Mt. Tabor, the Biblical site of the Transfiguration of Jesus.  It was pretty incredible to be able to see so much from this site.  It’s difficult to see in this photo, but the line of trees further off in the horizon on the right is Nazareth.

We then headed to Jerash, which we entered through a beautiful triumphal arch.

The detail was really incredible.

The city was quite large, with an oval colonnade and paved streets. The roads are dotted with covered manholes.  It was often possible to see through gaps around these manholes… a startling reminder that the roads were laid over their sewer system.  It was surprising to learn that it has survived several earthquakes and still remains so well intact.

There was even a column that swayed back and forth.  The movement was imperceptible to the eye, but if you put anything (a credit card, a key, a finger!) in one of the cracks in the column, you could see the object move up and down as the column swayed or feel the pressure changing on your finger.  It was pretty weird!

Above is the oval colonnade… along with some bread sitting on a rock.

There is also a Byzantine church at Jerash that has an elaborate mosaic floor that is still largely intact.

There was also a theater.

These guys were playing bagpipes… not exactly what I was expecting, but why not!

There’s Brandon and the last known sighting of our trusty guidebook.

And then the sun went down and we went back to our hotel to rest up before another busy day of sightseeing.

Post a comment