Dateline: Amman. Here we sit some 80 miles from the fighting in Gaza. Yes, the local media are covering it intensively and with bias. But then, so is CNN. Everything here is serene. The only military thing we've seen was an overflight by a largish military cargo plane.
Amman is a very attractive city. The late king decreed that all buildings built after a certain time were to be made of the local limestone. That stone has a warm ivory color and the buildings look clean and tidy. I think HM (as his friends called His Magisty King Hussein) had a good idea, given the lack of interest in maintenance in this part of the world. These buildings will never need paint or much of anything else except new roofs. The upshot is that they call Amman "the white city," an apt descriptor.
In addition to the uniform color, the city is much cleaner than Cairo, and the drivers here actually stay in their lanes most of the time. If you can ignore that half the signs are in Arabic, you could be in a city in California. All the usual franchises are here: Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonalds (known everywhere as "the American embassy"), Subway, Radio Shack, Western Union, Mobil, etc.
The actual U.S. embassy here is huge, reputedly the second largest in the world. The Jordanian government provides protection for the embassy, two armored cars, a couple more machine gun mounted trucks, and an reinforced platoon of troops stand guard. I guess unfriendly demonstrations are a definite possibility. By contrast, every Jordanian I've talked to (maybe 8) has been not just polite but very friendly. Of course I haven't expressed any opinions about Gaza either; I see no point being unduly provocative.
We visited the Dead Sea yesterday and, earlier in the day, saw some small part of the Dead Sea scrolls in the Jordanian Archeological Museum. It is a small museum but there is a very large one under construction. There is so much history here that they can really show some good stuff.
One last piece of comparison between Egypt and Jordan. We flew in and out of three different airports in Egypt, including a really new one at Luxor. Nowhere in Egypt did they have the 'snorkel' ramps that are common in the U.S. At every airport we loaded and disembarked via truck mounted stairways that took us to the tarmac where we boarded buses to the terminal. In Jordan, by contrast, we walked out of the plane and were faced with no stairs, just the usual telescoping tube we use in the U.S. - believe me, it was appreciated.
