We arrived in Amman at 8 in the evening, and the first thing we did was to get a Jordanian sim card with 4g network (including free local calls & sms, and 3GB of data) from the Zain kiosque – it was about 20€ and worked well throughout the trip – even in the desert! A driver picked us up and took us to the home of friends where we spent our first night. The air in Amman was pleasantly warm and had a sweet and embracing scent, it smelled like a mix between apple flavoured water pipe smoke and warm desert sand.

We woke up early the next morning, had a joint breakfast with our hosts and took a cab to Amman’s southern bus station in the Wahedat area, from where we hopped on one of the local buses to go to Petra. (There is also a tourist bus service called JETT bus which departs to Petra every morning at 6.30am and returns at 5pm) The local buses from Wahedat depart every hour (or rather, once they are full) and the price is 7€ per seat, we got there at 8am and waited about 45 minutes to depart – and we paid for three seats – one each, and one for our bags. :)

The 3,5h trip through the desert isn’t very exciting in itself, but it’s always pleasant to look out the window and relax while the wind tosses your hair around. A nice and easy start to our trip.

img src=”https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7598/16815529029_c12da5be24_c.jpg” width=”800″ height=”534″ alt=”Jordan 2015: Amman”>