Amman Arrival| Jordan, Day 2

Day 2 - Tuesday, October 3, 2023

Before I knew it, Francisco was waking me up as we were nearing the end of our roughly 12-hour flight. I flung the blanket off my head, he called me a gremlin, and I was being served a rather unappetizing breakfast.

Once we landed in Amman, we headed toward Baggage Claim.

I actually wasn't expecting to meet up with our airport escort until after we'd gotten through most of the airport formalities, but Francisco spotted him holding a sign for us as we came down the hallway. Mr. Ashraf helped usher us through customs and immigration and then left us to wait for our luggage while he went to help another incoming guest. We waited a fairly long time for the luggage to come; you definitely start to get worried that your luggage might be the one that doesn't show up. While we were waiting, there was some kind of commotion with a small group at the airport, and it seemed like a fight was about to break out at any moment. No idea what was going on since they definitely weren't speaking English.

We waited outside for our taxi driver who drove the two of us to the ibis Amman. It was 4:30 PM, and while our day would barely have just been starting back home, we were exhausted.

We took in some of the sights along the way, like the Jordanian IKEA. Our second guide later told us that Jordanians don't really like shopping there because they don't like the idea of assembling their own furniture.

There was a security gate when we pulled up at the hotel, and there was a security checkpoint when going inside that we had to run our luggage through. We got checked into the hotel, and it was a rather small room. The two single beds were definitely twin bed size, if not smaller. The biggest problem is that I could hear all of the noise from the family in the adjoining room, and we were literally right next to the elevators, so there was a lot of other hallway noise trickling in.

We got situated and then went to get dinner. This was our first time trying a Jordanian buffet dinner and it would definitely not be our last. At first, we were like ok, not bad; soon, we were like OMG, I may never eat hummus again.

Some guy dropped the lid from a rather precariously balanced platter of food, and it made a huge clatter that resonated through the dining room. I was so glad it wasn't me who did that lol. I'm pretty sure he was one of the guys in our group as well. We took some melatonin - and definitely some zinc! - and went to bed for our first night in Jordan.