Dan and I found ourselves at Aljoun Castle earlier this year on a day trip from Amman. We had previously never heard of Aljoun Castle, but it was a super cool castle with well-preserved exterior that tourists can walk around around. We would never had visited it without the stop being included on our day trip. Here are some pictures and information if you want to include a stop at Aljoun on your own Jordan tour!
Aljoun Castle. Stairs up to the roof.
Amman is a large city, Jordan’s capital, and largely filled with picturesque white square buildings. It’s quite beautiful. But again, its large and it takes time to get from here to there, so I went back and forth on where to dine when we were in town! After much research, I found the BEST restaurant just a 10 minute walk from our hotel – Fakhreldine Restaurant & Cafe. In fact, it was so good we went back twice (rare for us)!! Please don’t miss this gem in Amman.
En route to Fakereldine.
On our departure from Amman, Jordan, Dan and I had two airport lounge options though our Priority Pass: Royal Jordanian’s Crown Lounge or the unaffiliated Petra Lounge. After googling some other reviews, we started with the Crown Lounge and it was so nice that we never left to check out the Petra Lounge! The Crown Lounge was quite luxurious – definitely an upgrade from many Priority Pass lounges!
Luxurious sofas welcome guests.
Dan and I spent an afternoon visiting the ancient city of Jerash (or rather, Gerasa) back in May on our trip to Jordan. It was a great experience and recommended! Here is some information on our visit.
Jerash is now a modern city in Northern Jordan, a little less than 1 hour from Amman by car. While being its own city, Jerash is best known as the home of the ancient Greco-Roman city of Gerasa, which is known, at least amongst archaeologist and historians, to be one of the best preserved Greco-Roman cities in the world. Frequently referred to as the “Pompeii of the East” by those in the know (because its so well preserved, not because of any volcano eruptions), it’s definitely some of the best preserved ruins that I’ve seen worldwide. Modern-day Jerash is very much a tourist town, but ancient Gerasa enjoyed much success as a trading post and a favorite city of Roman Emperor Hadrian, before eventually falling out of favor and into ruin. Modern-day Jerash is now the perfect place to day trip from Amman.
The ruins of Ancient Gerasa, with modern Jerash in the background (the white square buildings similar to Amman)
Amman, located in the Northern part of Jordan, is its capital. A number of travel advice suggested that I skip Amman when visiting Jordan, and I am very glad that I didn’t listen! While perhaps less exciting than some of Jordan’s other heavy hitters (Petra, Dead Sea, Wadi Rum, etc.), Amman is a gorgeous city that is often referred to as the “white city” due to the many, many white homes filling its hills; very picturesque and photographic, especially in Spring with all its flowers in bloom. Also, a great entrance or end to Jordan! In addition to its gorgeous white structures, Jordan is a fairly modern city, especially for the Middle East, with lots of Instagrammable spots! We spent 3 nights and 2 days in Amman, with a half-day trip to Jerash. We thought this was a perfect amount of time, but you could definitely squeeze it into 1 day. Here are the highlights from our time Amman!
Amman on a map!
Beautiful Amman!
More pretty Amman. This is a stair case that we stumbled upon just walking around.
