A bit of a disappointment...

Leaving Damascus....

I guess we had seen everything we wanted to see in the city, but it was still a shame. I could have stayed there for much longer. On our last night there, we could hardly move through the Old City. There were people EVERYWHERE, all out celebrating the public holiday and trying to have fun.

Every cafe and shisha cafe we tried to enter was a no-go. Each was full to the brim.

But.... it was time to move on.

So we rented a car for the day and headed off for the next country.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan! We were now entering the heartland of Lawrence and the Arab Revolt. We were entering a nation established by those who had fought with him.

However, as we were driving out of Damascus, the view that I had made me think that this was anything but the land that Lawrence and the Bedouin tribes had entered.

It was too green. Too managed.

Years of development had clearly changed this from a desert country to one that was far more fertile.

We sped passed Dera'a without even a glance and soon found ourselves out of Syria and in Jordan.

This was one border crossing that would go surprisingly smoothly for all of us. The immigration hall was clean and modern. There was none of the screaming or commotion that had followed us into Syria....

As we drove towards our destination of Amman, we stopped in Jerash. This was an ancient Roman city, so we thought that since it was on our way.... we'd have a look.

We were a little bit put off by the cost of entry of 8 Jordanian Dinars each though. It seemed the cheapness we had grown accustomed to was behind us.

It seemed nice enough though...

Everything was in ruins... as promised....
And Oliee decided that he was going to make us pose like a boyband as well!
However, for all of the sites, for all of the old buildings....
It just wasn't up to what we had grown used to.
Again, it was nice.

But it didn't deserve the adjetives of "amazing" and "breathtaking" that we had heard from other travellers.

We had definitely become "ancient ruin snobs". Having been spoilt by the sites of Ephesus, Aphrodisius, Hierapolis and Palmyra, it would now take alot for us to be gobsmacked as we had once been.

And sadly.... Jerash simply wasn't on the same level as those places.