I got up early enough this morning to walk to the highway 12 kikar and back. I wore a t-shirt this morning, but it was still a little cool with the steady breeze.
After breakfast, I packed for our trip, and then we headed out. Our destination: Aqaba, Jordan, less than 10 km away as the crow flies, but a whole world away, culturally.
It took more than an hour and a half just to cross the border. On the Israeli side, we had to go to 3 different windows. This was partly because we were driving our own car across.
On the Jordanian side there was considerably more to do, again much of it because of our car. Basically, our car is officially registered in Jordan, and they switched the plates to Jordanian plates. Rosa (our car) looks very strange with her white plates instead of her usual yellow Israeli ones. I had to buy obligatory Jordanian insurance, too. Finally, though, we made it through without any problems.
We then drove on into Aqaba, grabbed a little to eat from a tiny market, and found our hotel, which I had reserved via the internet before we left.
While David took a nap, I went out around the neighborhood to find a place to change some more Israeli shekels to Jordanian dinars, which I finally succeeded in doing.
After that, we drove down the coast of the gulf on the other side, stopping to take pics in several places. Eilat so tiny a far away from over here! When we got to the boarder crossing to Saudi Arabia we had to turn around, of course. But we didn't return directly to Aqaba. Instead, we took an inland road that was built mostly so that trucks from the industrial area can proceed to the interior of the country without having to go through Aqaba. But it was quite an interesting and scenic route.
After returning to our hotel in Aqaba, we went out to eat at a nearby restaurant. David had linguini with a mushroom tomato sauce, and I had a Greek salad, which was surprisingly good. For desert, David had a rather dry brownie, and I had a banana split, which was good but, as far as I could tell, contained no banana!
Our hotel had upgraded us from the ground floor to the 2nd floor, but the WiFi doesn't reach our room, so I'm writing from the lobby.
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