Day Eight

Alas, Emily has returned to Baltimore, and I am left here with only my Kit Kat Koffee mug to comfort me. It is true that that the Tar Heels' preseason #1 ranking in the AP poll and the Coaches' poll gave me an emotional boost, but preseason polls only go so far.

Separated again by a continent and an ocean and now by seven hours instead of six, thanks to last weekend's fall-back, we will have to finish the chronicle of our adventures in stages. Since Emily knows the password to this blog, she'll jump in and add comments as she sees fit.

DAY EIGHT

This day started off with great uncertainty. Since the Amra Palace could only guarantee us one night, we did not know where we'd be spending the next night of our trip. (At least we knew it would not be the Sella Hotel under any circumstances.) We made the following plan: eat the Amra Palace's complimentary breakfast and check about another's night stay there. If there was no room or it looked unlikely, we would check the schedule for buses to Amman. Rather than hustle around Petra for another hotel, we decided we would just head back to Jerusalem, since we were both dragging from our colds and liked the idea of waking up in Jerusalem for Em's last full day. The only problem was that the border closes at 2 pm on Friday and the drive to Amman was listed in the guidebook as 3 hrs., so we would have to catch a bus pretty soon after breakfast.

After we ate, the desk clerk said there were no rooms available, and he wouldn't know for sure one way or another until 10 or 11 am. So we walked the five minutes to the bus station, where we encountered a taxi driver who said he could take us to Amman for very cheap. There was a bus that parked on the other side of the station lot, and when I asked the taxi driver where it was going, he said: "Not to Amman. No more buses to Amman." I walked over to the bus and asked the driver: "To Amman?" and he said, "Yes." Nothing like a simple answer to a simple question.

But the bus was leaving in two minutes! We decided we would take it, then explained to the driver that we had to get our bags. He said to get on and then drove us around the corner to the Amra Palace, where Em packed the bags and I checked us out. I felt bad about holding up the other passengers until we reboarded and the driver stopped at an ATM for another passenger.

So we were on our way to Amman. We picked up people and dropped off others along the way, and it was fun to be on the road with some locals. We got to Amman in only two hrs. and then caught a cab to the King Hussein-Allenby Bridge. The cab ride took about thirty minutes, and along the way, we passed a police van driving with its back doors wide open, as if it was transporting a carpet. But there was no carpet poking out the back of the van, only the feet of a corpse covered with a white cloth. It was a grim sight, and when I caught the eye of our driver in the rear view mirror, he put the back of his hand to his opposite cheek and tilted his head, indicating sleep. I nodded that I understood.

The rest of the drive was thankfully uneventful. As when one leaves Jerusalem for the Dead Sea, the drive from Amman to the border is a steady descent. Just before the border, we had to switch taxis because the first driver was not authorized to pass through the pre-border checkpoint. (At least this was how I understood what he explained in broken English.) When we got in the new taxi, the driver said. "Welcome to Amman," which seemed funny because we were actually leaving Amman.

The Jordanian side of the border is a study in ineffeciency. There are no signs and no real lines; people just crowd around windows, and you can only guess which window you need. Consequently, Emily and I stood in the mass of people arriving in Jordan for about twenty minutes before we realized our mistake. When we got to the departure side, there were five workers, and the whole operation reminded me of the post office in our Baltimore neighborhood or Kinko's pretty much anywhere: there is always at least one person doing nothing. This person could likely help you; maybe this person will help you in a few minutes. But not right now. When we finally got on the bus to cross the border we met a father and son from Venezuela, and they reported that when they arrived at 9:30 am, they had to wait for the Passport Control guy to finish his breakfast in the other room before he would stamp them through.

Once on the Israeli side, things moved a little faster, but it was still slow from the tight security. At last, we were on the bus that dropped us off near the Damascus Gate, and we walked up to the Albright, where we took a well-deserved nap. Since I had signed us out for dinner that night, we went to the nearby Azzahra Hotel and ate. The waiter recognized us from the Friday before and mentioned that it was my third Friday in a row there. (I had gone by myself the Friday before Emily got here.) He brought us a free dessert, which Emily didn't like; luckily, I was up to the task of eating both.

Unfortunately, we didn't take any photos this day (or the next). We were both feeling sick, and there weren't many photo ops. I would have loved to document the scene at the border crossing, but I didn't think either side would appreciate someone photographing their security measures -- who knows how long we would have been stuck at the border then!