Amman is the capital of Jordan.
It has an Greco-Roman amphitheatre and is close to the well preserved Roman city of Jerash.
But after a torrid night at the Cliff hotel, staring at the slowly rotating ceiling fan, sleep was all we craved and the Palace hotel, the oldest in Amman, supplied this handsomely.
Ramadan arrived a couple of days ago and most Jordanians fast during the hours of daylight. When the sun goes down, a family based party atmosphere descends on the town as hungry and thirsty people return home from work and gorge themselves in a single evening meal, on far more food than they would normally eat in a whole day.
But the fasting combined with the heat of summer leads to tempers fraying. Traders on the street barked abuse at each other. Turf was more aggressively defended and fights spilled out between young men, their friends trying hard to separate the combatants, succeeding temporarily only to see the embers of the fight burst back into to flame a few minutes later.
At LP's recommendation we sought out the Cairo restaurant for the city's best charcoaled chicken.
The map was less than useless, sending us off on a wild goose chase, if that is possible when you are searching for chicken. Resorting finally to local advice, a series of Western Union offices sent us first in one direction and then the other. Finally, a man selling scarves put us right and we wandered, famished, into the eatery.
The bad tempered atmosphere on the street seemed to have followed us indoors and from up a mezzanine staircase came the furious sound of argument that we thought we had left behind in Egypt. Twenty or more men emerged down the staircase a few minutes later. The fact that they were all waiting staff explained the absence of anyone to take our order but curiously, there were fare more people in the room than worked in the restaurant.
We concluded that it was some form of collective pay bargaining for all the restaurants on the street. Small offshoots of the main debate rumbled on around us, particularly among the chefs who seemed to have done particularly badly in the new arrangements. I was tempted to suggest that they should nominate a single representative for future negotiations on the basis that too many chefs... oh, never mind.
The map was less than useless, sending us off on a wild goose chase, if that is possible when you are searching for chicken. Resorting finally to local advice, a series of Western Union offices sent us first in one direction and then the other. Finally, a man selling scarves put us right and we wandered, famished, into the eatery.
The bad tempered atmosphere on the street seemed to have followed us indoors and from up a mezzanine staircase came the furious sound of argument that we thought we had left behind in Egypt. Twenty or more men emerged down the staircase a few minutes later. The fact that they were all waiting staff explained the absence of anyone to take our order but curiously, there were fare more people in the room than worked in the restaurant.
We concluded that it was some form of collective pay bargaining for all the restaurants on the street. Small offshoots of the main debate rumbled on around us, particularly among the chefs who seemed to have done particularly badly in the new arrangements. I was tempted to suggest that they should nominate a single representative for future negotiations on the basis that too many chefs... oh, never mind.
Returning to the Palace, we settled down for an afternoon of action movies in the lounge. Two Italian women smoked heavily all the way through and the two caged parrots expressed their displeasure by squawking loudly and flicking their droppings through the bars.
Amman is a fairly bland, low rise city and despite the pleasantness of the Jordanians, we were ready to leave for the bright lights of Istanbul.
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