0miles/0km
The weather was thankfully better, and we used our time to organise the back of the Landrover yet again and to finally get the laundry done. The local laundrette service was quite expensive, so we ended up doing half of our washing in the hotel bath and hanging out socks and pants around the room to dry.
We went for a walk around Damascus, through the Souks (shopping arcades) and around the old town. I had been looking to buy a camping chair since we left, as I couldn’t buy one in the UK in the middle of winter for some reason. We didn’t think there was much hope of finding a folding camping chair in Damascus either, but we stumbled across a shop where I bought a deckchair for around £6/€7.
Day 20
70Miles/113km
We headed for the Jordanian border early to ensure we had enough time to get through, and doing it whilst awake and alert is much easier than messing about when tired. It only took us around 50minutes to get stamped out of Syria, get VISAs, vehicle insurance and to get the Carnet stamped, and we had entered Jordan. At every stage of the process we were greeted by a Jordanian who first asked where we were from, and then said “You are welcome in Jordan”, “Welcome, welcome” or “Welcome to Jordan”. This is what happened every time we then met anyone, anywhere in Jordan for our whole stay.
We arrived in Amman and tried to find the hotel from only an address and failed miserably as the address was in western script, whilst the road signs and maps were mainly in Arabic only. We were hungry and headed for a bite to eat at a local buffet restaurant first. We both had huge plates full of chicken, rice and vegetable with a cup of tea for a mere 4JD/£4/€4.40!
We got a taxi to the hotel, checked in for two nights and chilled out for the evening in anticipation of exploring Amman the next day watching ‘The Terminal’ on satellite TV and drinking Arak.
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