Into Kuwait

After checking out of the hotel on the Dead Sea, I had a little trouble getting a driver to go to the Baptism Site and Mt. Nebo. The guy at the hotel tried to charge me JD100, which is about $140, a complete ripoff. Of course he then kept coming back to pester me about how good of a deal he was giving me and how I was a fool not to take it.

But I finally was able to wrangle a deal for about $55 to take me to the Baptism Site and then to my hotel in Amman. I hated to miss Mt. Nebo, but in the end I just wanted to spend some quality time with Jesus and get into Amman.

The Baptism Site was pretty cool. I'm not a very religious person at all, but it was incredibly interesting to think that you were standing on the same ground that Jesus Christ did. The evidence seems pretty conclusive that this is the spot and all the major religions, or at least the Christian ones, agree on it. I think just about everyone has a church there.

The trip inside involves a mandatory tour since it is a heavily militarized area. Soldiers are everywhere and you're told do not, under any circumstances, take a picture of one of them. Our first stop was to view the Jordan River itself, then we walked to the pool where they believe Jesus' baptism actually took place. They had some remains dug up of an old church that stood during that time. After that, we walked down to the river again and were allowed to spend about 20 minutes wandering around. There wasn't anything special there at all, but at that point we were about 15 feet from Israel since the river is the border. The West Bank is what we were looking at and we could see the town of Jericho in the distance.

From there I went into Amman, which it turned out is really not much to see. In fact, after the friendliness and laidback atmosphere I saw in the rest of the country, Amman pretty much sucked. It was hard to walk around since the traffic is crazy. You also get pestered more than anywhere else, save the Hertz guy at the Marriott.

Yesterday I walked around the Roman ruins downtown and saw the theatre from the time it was the Roman city of Philadelphia, then on up to the Temple of Hercules and the archaelogical museum. The museum was interesting, but they seemed to downplay something I really wanted to see, parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They had a small room for the pieces they had, but it wasn't really highlighted like I thought it would be.

After that I headed for the airport, only to find out my flight was delayed by 4 hours. Amman is not an airport you want to spend that much extra time in, trust me. So I got to Kuwait City late, then after spending well over an hour getting my visa, got in too late to do anything. The restaurants at the hotel were even closed, though I didn't mind too much since I got upgraded to an executive level room and just had some free tea in the lounge. This also trumps the last Marriott I was in on the Dead Sea as the nices hotel I've been in. This one really kicks ass.

So today after wandering around a bit this morning, I'm off to explore what little attraction Kuwait City offers. I figure I'll walk along the Gulf Road to the aquarium since it's about the only thing open until 4PM or so. Most businesses and shops close during the afternoon hours. After that it's off to the airport and nonstop back to Atlanta.