Escapisms

After waking I jumped into the shower to rinse put the remains of the Dead Sea out of my hair and also off my body. I swear the colour of the water was the colour of the waters in the Dead Sea itself it was so disgusting. My skin felt really soft, smooth and clean – at long last after a night in the desert, the camel ride & Dead Sea trip without a shower – pungent!!I slowly managed to get all of my things together and even managed to sort out my hand luggage and by the time that Janet was out of the shower I was having a quick further 20 winks!
We headed down to breakfast which was a whole variety of things and I had some coffee which, for hotel standards, was actually quite good. I didn’t fancy much food and everyone just seemed somber and quiet – the fun was all over – back to reality – the sense of escapism no more.
I had one last fag after hauling my bag out to the bus – I swear it is heavier than it was on the way out but there really is no reason for it to be. We all headed in the same old bus through the slightly busier streets of Amman on the way out to the airport. We had one slightly worrying moment at the entrance to the airport when the driver told the armed guard that he had a whole load of English on board ( well, that’s what we assume he said) as before you could say Jack Robinson (or perhaps Lawrence of Arabia would be more suitable!!) he was asking for the door to be opened – he waited until the driver came around and opened the door and with a gun over his shoulder had a damned good look at us all before letting us carry on in to the main airport.
The little man who had greeted us as soon as we had arrived off the plane returned and helped us all through customs and checked us all in so that we were all sat together. We thanked him – had our passports stamped and headed to the Duty Free shopping – thinking that the choice would be very limited. First of all we headed to Starbucks following Emily who had been desperate for a coffee from there – because of course we were bound to find a Starbucks in the Ancient city of Petra!!! It did taste good though compared to the crap coffee that we had been drinking. Jan and I got a city/country mug of Jordan which I am really pleased with.
We all made a variety of trips to the Duty Free having made a base and it actually turned out to actually be quite good, that’s great English, hey! I was really only looking to see if the were any decent photo albums that I would be able to put all or at least some of my photos of the trip in. I managed to find some truly stunning ones but I am going to have to seriously cut down when I put them in – like half of the ones that I have taken on the whole trip!! Emily obviously had a major shopping spree as when it came to boarding the plane after some of us some of us were swapping phone numbers we could not find her and so we headed to the gate regardless and after checking in at the gate she was thankfully the other side.
So after a flight that felt way longer than it was we all collected out bags etc and some just walked off without saying goodbye to anyone, some first said bye and went and others hugged and promised to be in touch soon. I know for sure that I will be keeping in regular touch with Jan – she REALLY made my holiday just so much more enjoyable!!