Why do ruins attract us so much? One reason is confronting history in the flesh, so to speak, listening in person to the stones and carvings from thousands of years ago. Related to this is…
Canyons and sand, water and greenery, oases and beaches, flatland and mountain – this is the delectable diversity of southern Jordan’s desert, as we experienced it in three locations. Wadi Rum – the high desert…
One of the new Seven Wonders of the World, Petra truly deserves that designation, but not because of its signature sight, the carved façade known as the Treasury. Tour groups come in hordes to make…
One of the most exciting facets of Jordan is its wealth of mosaic floors dating back a few millennia to the Roman and Byzantine eras. From Amman to Madaba and Umm Ar Rasas to Petra,…
Temple of Artemis, Jerash Jerash and Umm Qais, in the north of Jordan, were one of 10 regional centers for the Roman empire during the first centuries AD. As such, under the names of Gerasa…
Anyone who was raised in an Abrahamic religion or has some familiarity with Western literature knows the stories… Stories in the Bible or Koran about such places and peoples as Jericho, Bethany where Jesus was…
Amman, the capital of Jordan is both ancient and new. The site was occupied back to the Neolithic age, some 10,000 years ago, then flourished under the biblical era Ammonites some 2 to 3000 years…
Just a two-hour ferry ride from Djibouti City across the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea is the coastal fishing village of Obock. This was the old capital of Djibouti, when the French occupied…
After the remarkable landscape of Lac Abbe (see post), we figured we could not add much surprising to our Djibouti trip. Not so, due to the country’s remarkable highs (at the Foret du Day) and…
After Ethiopia, we shifted to diminutive Djibouti. After visiting the capital for a while (see post), our first trip within the country was Lac Abbe. At the Petites Cheminees, Lac Abbe We drove through a…