A Castle and a City

Today I went with Liz and Lena, from Austria and Switzerland, respectively, to Ajloun and Jerash.

Ajloun is a castle that Salah ad-Din's nephew built to maintain his hold on the Jordan Valley. Pretty cool castle, overall, but it lacked any sort of explanation beyond "Hey, this is a castle Salah ad-Din's nephew built. Mongols tore it down, then somebody else rebuilt it". So first off... Mongols? In Jordan? Good job, guys. Frankly, I'm impressed the Crusaders got there, and they stopped in Constantinople to get supplies (well, sacked it is more like, but To-may-to to-mah-to). Also: there was a small museum, which had hilarious english explanations for things. Seriously, if it was just spelling errors, that'd be fine... but the grammar was way weird too. I forgot to take any pictures or write it down, but trust me... it was hilariously bad.

On the same note as hilarious signs, in my hotel there were signs up saying, "We serve guests like you as good food" and "If you don't see what you're looking for, you've come to the right place".

Then, we went on to Jerash, an old Roman city (well, older than that, but Rome was it's heyday), that just sortof faded to nothingness, and then (my guidebook claims) was swallowed by the sand for about a thousand years, to be rediscovered in the 19th century, then excavated in the 20th. Very well preserved, overall, although lots of roofs were missing and that sort of thing. Anyways, I have lots of awesome pictures from that which I'll show you all later.

Tomorrow: Syria, in sha allah!