Trip Day 2 - arrived Amman

Sept 2

I think we arrived at the Amman Cham Palace around 10 pm. We are settled into our room on the seventh  and are showered and toothbrushed. What a nice feeling!!!

But I should start at the beginning. 

Yesterday when our flight was called we left the club, went to the gate, boarded soon and settled in. Had to get the flight socks on. They make all the difference on longer flights. Really!

James again had secured bulkheads for us. As comfortable as you can get in tourist class. 

We taxied quite a ways with a good number of planes in front of us. But look at the queue behind us. We left around 7 pm. 

Bye bye Philly. 

We had good tailwinds. The flight was quite smooth and even I slept a little. We like to follow the plane on the screen and this was info when we landed in Frankfurt at about 8 am. 

We knew we were going to have quite a long lay-over. Our next flight was going to be with Royal Jordanian Airlines at 3 pm. 

Again we were admitted into an airline lounge which is so nice. Deutsche Brötchen for breakfast and all sorts of goodies. I was just happy with a good cup of tea. 

And of course later we had some lunch. 

We left the lounge a little earlier then we had to because we wanted some steps. Our gate was at the very end of E and there was this corner. Those little "cabins" were quite comfortable and made (I guess) for you to use your phone so not everybody around you had to listen to your conversation. I was quite impressed. 

The flight took about 4 1/2 hours, was smooth and nothing to complain about. When we landed we had to change some money into JOD so we could buy our visas (40 JOD each). All this we had been told by our travel company OAT and we were prepared. Everybody was nice and there were no long lines. We got our suitcases and left customs area. 

We had arranged for the hotel to pick us up but ... nobody there with a sign. Mmhh. James went to the info stand across the hall. They were very helpful and called the hotel for us. They must have forgotten and told us to just take an airport taxi to town which would cost 20 JOD and took half an hour. 

It was a warm night. I think the driver had no airconditioning so the windows were rolled down including the sunroof. He didn't know any English and smoked while he was driving. The roads were quite often 3 lanes wide each direction. Once he was overtaking a car where 2 little 4year-old were standing  inside their car and half of their little bodies were out of the sunroof and they were waving happily. We heard a lot of honking especially in one tunnel which was a bit deafening. All very interesting. 

Our guide for this pre-trip was waiting at the hotel for us with a bottle of water, 2 apples and 2 bananas. A little orientation about the hotel, wifi etc and we got checked in. 

Time for lights out now. Tomorrow is totally on our own. We had chosen to come a day early. It is wise to do that if you arrange your own flights (instead of letting the tour company do it) and we can get the jet lag a little out of our systems.