....Our evening ended up with us drinking beers in a smokey Irish pub in one of Amman's wealthy trendy neighborhoods, hanging out with Sue and others from Amman's expat community. Culturally it was a million miles away from the poor neighborhoods we had seen earlier in the day in that same city.....
Earlier that same morning our minibus from Madaba had taken us downtown to see the older, more traditional part of the city. We walked through the shops in the Souqs (markets) and got a feel for the downtown area. Although Amman has a long history, it is not an old Islamic city and never rivaled Damascus or Cairo as the great cultural centers of the Middle East. In fact, much of the cities growth has come recently from refugees.
In the last 20 years Amman has been the recipient of millions of Palestinian refugees. The old part of town has a vast camp of them but many came with money. This money has changed Amman to a modern, spread out city with expensive cars and wealthy neighborhoods. This trend has continued over the last couple of years as Iraqi refugees have invested more money into the city. So the Amman of today is essentially two different cities; the poorer and traditional downtown and the wealthy suburbs with swanky shopping malls and western fast food restaurants.
Through Hospitality Club we meet Sue, who is working for her countries embassy in Jordan and we talked about her life, living in Jordan and the country itself. We ate at a typical Bedouin restaurant smoked a narguile (water pipe) and afterward headed to the Irish Pub. As we hadn't been to that type of place for quite a while it was a bit of a culture shock for us at first. It was nice to see another side of the country from what we had gotten used to for the last couple of months and we really had a nice time.
After enjoying the ambiance and culture of Damascus so much we found Amman to be a bit disappointingly western and modern. That evening we stayed with Sue and the next morning headed out for the Roman ruins of Jerash.
Earlier that same morning our minibus from Madaba had taken us downtown to see the older, more traditional part of the city. We walked through the shops in the Souqs (markets) and got a feel for the downtown area. Although Amman has a long history, it is not an old Islamic city and never rivaled Damascus or Cairo as the great cultural centers of the Middle East. In fact, much of the cities growth has come recently from refugees.
In the last 20 years Amman has been the recipient of millions of Palestinian refugees. The old part of town has a vast camp of them but many came with money. This money has changed Amman to a modern, spread out city with expensive cars and wealthy neighborhoods. This trend has continued over the last couple of years as Iraqi refugees have invested more money into the city. So the Amman of today is essentially two different cities; the poorer and traditional downtown and the wealthy suburbs with swanky shopping malls and western fast food restaurants.
Through Hospitality Club we meet Sue, who is working for her countries embassy in Jordan and we talked about her life, living in Jordan and the country itself. We ate at a typical Bedouin restaurant smoked a narguile (water pipe) and afterward headed to the Irish Pub. As we hadn't been to that type of place for quite a while it was a bit of a culture shock for us at first. It was nice to see another side of the country from what we had gotten used to for the last couple of months and we really had a nice time.
After enjoying the ambiance and culture of Damascus so much we found Amman to be a bit disappointingly western and modern. That evening we stayed with Sue and the next morning headed out for the Roman ruins of Jerash.
Steve
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