Actually day two ... we got in last night, had a fair amount of line-waiting getting a visa and all at the airport, which was annoying after basically 24 solid hours of travel, but okay. The drive from the airport was dark and rainy, and occasionally interesting because the roads are not built here with drainage in mind. But our driver was equal to the task, and I was too tired to worry about it.
(In Paris, incidentally, I had the pleasure of introducing the Amazon Kindle to airport security ... yeesh. But I dig the thing immensely, especially since you can read pretty much anything from Project Gutenberg on it. And living an hour or so from the nearest full-service bookstore, the Kindle makes a lot of sense.)
So, after a good night's sleep (assisted by Charles Dickens's Bleak House, I must confess!), I got up this morning to be shown around Jordan, specifically the old city near the amphitheater. I took some photos that I think will look okay, but the damned Kodak camera will not play with Linux, and when the Wordshed goes on the road, we kick it Kubuntu, baby!
So the pictures will have to wait. Since it was raining, that's probably no great loss. Lots of stores, mostly.
We had lunch in a restaurant with no menu ... they just bring you food: hummus, falafel, and the like. Very satisfying ... even more so since the price for the three of us was JD 3, about five bucks. We ordered from one waiter, and when another came and started serving us, we asked him what was going on (since generosity seems often to be accompanied by the expectation of dinars); he informed us solemnly, "I am responsible for the falafel." I like people who take their work seriously.
The point is, I think we're going to beat the per diem. And that, my friends, is the first rule of travel.
3 comments:
In my wildest dreams I couldn't imagine anything lovelier than a restaurant where a dedicated expert brings you falafel and hummus and charges you $1.66 for it. (This is, curiously enough, also likely to be Tom's nightmare.)
At least when you fall asleep reading _Bleak House_ on the Kindle, you don't run the risk of breaking your nose when the "book" falls on your face.
"I am responsible for the falafel" may be my new response to questions like, "So what do you do?".
I'm trying to get a start on Bleak House myself (using the ancient technology of bound leaves of paper) but because I keep doing so at night, lying down under blankets in bed when it's 10 degrees outside, I keep falling asleep by page 5. The first chapter is good, even better the second time through.
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