Top Destinations
Petra
Petra (By Day)
We arrived around 6 am when they opened the gates. We used the Jordan Pass to get in, which ended up being a good investment (Research this if you are unaware). We were within the first handful of people on the grounds. When you first enter, you walk for about 30 min to hit the Treasury, which is the major attraction of the Wonder of the World. This treasury, along with most of Petra is said to have been built around 1st century BC and was abandoned in the mid 7th century AD after an earthquake destroyed most of the city and the economy was no longer thriving after adjusted trade routes no longer relied on Petra.
After you get all your photos in by the Treasury, you can start heading deeper in the grounds to keep exploring. We recommend grabbing a map at the visitor center to help you navigate the expansive grounds.
From the Treasury, we started walking towards Ad-Deir Monastery on the opposite end of the grounds. The walk from the Treasury to the Monastery is around 2 hours. About halfway, there is one restaurant that seemed like a nice checkpoint. From the restaurant we took a Donkey to save some time and ride on a Donkey, we had never done that before. The donkeys know the way up to the Monastery so they just run up the hills along the stone paths at a blazing pace. It was very entertaining and efficient. Up at the Monastery, there is another café and some cool seats near an embedded hole by a cave. After a long excursion to get there, this was an obvious place to take a break. Once we got our photos and were ready to head back, we walked about an hour to get back to the Restaurant. Once we arrived at the Restaurant we were shocked by how many people there now were. Before getting to the Monastery we were the only ones and hardly could find the path to get there (The donkey helped). Now that it was later in the morning, it was packed with tourists as anticipated.
The restaurant wasn’t open by the time we arrived (opened at 11 am, and it was 10 am). Instead of waiting we decided to keep walking and eat when we left the grounds. We walked at a leisurely pace and enjoyed the major attractions along the way back towards the entrance, now completely filled with tourists. We hiked up to a portion of the tombs and eavesdropped on a tour group before continuing on our walk. After stopping to see The Street of Facades, The Theatre, The Great Temple, The Colonnaded Street, Qasar al-Bint, and the Lion Triclinium we were exhausted. The total walk back from the Monastery to the entrance was about 3 hours with these minor stops. Other longer walking paths are available for those who enjoy hiking and want to see all the sites. The Royal Tombs and the High Place of Sacrifice are two major ones.
After making it out of grounds around noon, we were also starving. We went to lunch at the first restaurant we found, Zad or Plaza Restaurant, just outside the visitor center. We noticed it was expensive but given we were so hungry and tired we didn’t care. It was only until later in the day when we went to the Cave Bar and My Moms Recipe for dinner that we realized we got ripped off.
We negotiated with a Cab Driver and paid him 3JOD to drive us back to the top of the hill where Nomads was located to avoid walking any further.
When planning your trip, make sure to pack comfortable shoes while visiting Petra. You will be walking for hours throughout the day if this wasn’t clear from the description.
Petra (By Night)
We wrote a complete post on all things Petra by Night, you can check it out here!
Just Outside of Petra….
Where to Stay
Just outside of Petra is the town called Wadi Musa, which is where you will stay. There are a variety of hotels and hostels you can choose from. Given we were only in town to do Petra for one complete day, we chose a hostel (Nomads) near the entrance to Petra. Nomads had the best beds on our trip by a long shot. They also have a restaurant on-site, and they hosted a Christmas Day Dinner with a variety of local dishes; Mansaf, Musakhan chicken, and lentil soup. They also had a Yogurt Sauce that is served with Mansaf that was delicious.
The walk from Nomads to the entrance is about a 10 min walk down a large hill. This was very convenient and because we were entering the grounds so early, there was nobody on the roads.
There are closer hotels that are literally across the street from the entrance. You will pay more of a premium for rooms here, and this did not seem worth it to us. There is also a Free Parking Lot just outside the grounds. If you are planning to get to the grounds early, you can stay a bit further away and just park at this parking lot if required.
A lot of the tour groups seemed to be traveling from Amman for day trips or other cities farther from Wadi Musa. If you choose to stay closer you will get access to quite a lot of the grounds before a large portion of the tourists arrive.
Cave Bar
We had some time to kill between buying our Petra by Night tickets and entering the grounds. We went into Cave Bar to get a drink and some apps and had a great time. We ordered Petra beer and had Falafel for the first time. The bar was not too crowded so we were able to get a private booth inside a small cutout in the Cave. The atmosphere was amazing, and the food and drinks were reasonably priced so we could have stayed here all night.
My Moms Recipe (Dinner)
We researched some nearby restaurants after Petra by Night and found My Moms Recipe had good reviews. When we arrived around 9 pm it was already completely packed. We could tell a few tour groups were taken here, but that didn’t take away from the local atmosphere. The food was all we went for and we were not disappointed with the selection of options and the quality. We had the best hummus we have ever had and ordered Galya (a beef, tomato, and onion dish) served on rice.
Wadi Rum
Arriving
If you have a rental car, you will have to stop at a checkpoint, get out of your car, and get your Jordan Pass stamped. You can also use the restrooms and do some shopping. We took this opportunity to buy a Shumack in the red local Jordanian color palette (The turbans the locals wear).
You will drop off your car at a community parking lot at the edge of town. Your camp representative will pick you up, take you to a home in town where other guests are waiting, and then they will take you on your day trip from there. Usually stopping for one hike before lunch, then back to the camp to check-in and eat lunch.
Lodging
There are many options for where to stay in Wadi Rum. They all mostly include similar room options which are tents in the desert and all provide most of the same day trip packages where they take you around in a jeep to all the same places. There is another tier of lodging in the area becoming popular called Bubble Tents. These are full glass enclosures that allow you to see a complete panoramic view of the night sky. This option was out of our price range and we felt we ended up getting great value for where we stayed. We chose to stay at the Starlight camp because we found they had very competitive prices and offered the cultural Bedouin tents with one wall being all glass for stargazing from bed.
We loved our time at Starlight. All the employees were fun and energetic and the owner, Suleiman, was very nice and loved the fact that Allison was a photographer. They cooked chicken and veggies on a three-tiered tower for dinner and placed the whole tower underground to cook for two hours. They covered it with sand and before serving the meal they uncover the underground container and present the meal to the guests. This all occurs once the sun goes down and everyone is relaxing in the community lodge. The location of this camp is also noted on the map as the best place for sunset. There were other people from another camp even there for one night to watch the sunset. Right next to the main community lodge is a small mountain where you can climb to get a nice sunset view over distant mountain ranges. The peak of this small mountain was also the location where I proposed.
In the evening you can relax in the community lodge, play games, read books, sit by the fire and drink tea, or smoke Shisha (Hookah). They also offered a Camel Sunrise excursion which was beautiful. We were the only ones who did this on the morning we chose and it was peaceful and fun. We were able to take a bunch of cute photos of us with the camels as well!
Most people only spend one day at Wadi Rum because the main list of tourist activities takes one day. We decided to spend two days there so we had two opportunities to take star photos. The second night becoming when I proposed. During our second day, we did a separate excursion that was a lot less traveled. We had a private tour with one other couple from Spain and the guide took us on a 40 min drive to a mountain range, Jabal Umm ad Dami, next to Saudi Arabia. This is the highest mountain range in Jordan and provided an incredible panorama view. After an hour hike to the peak, we spent another hour taking photos and relaxing while the guide made us fresh tea after building a fire on the mountain. Upon hiking back down, the guide made us Galya (Local chicken dish) from scratch and we had a nice picnic. The whole tour ended up taking all day as we reached back to the camp around 3 pm and had some time to relax before the sunset at 4:45pm.
Day Excursions
Note: This is where Starlight camp guides took us, but we can say with 95% certainty this is where all of the camps will take you.
Red sand dunes: Large group of sand dunes that have piled up next to rock formations. This allows you to climb to the top and get a nice panoramic view. We also sand boarded using a board provided by our tour guide.
Khazali Canyon: A fissure about 100 m deep with Thamudic, Nabatean, and Islamic inscriptions and petroglyphs throughout. This was not especially exciting.
Um Froth Rock Arch: There is a cool arch rock formation that provides a nice photo opportunity. You can have someone in your tour group wait at the bottom of the short hike (5 min) to get a photo. This was very crowded and everyone was waiting in a line to get photos at this arch.
Lawrence House: Our tour guide gave us more time here which allowed us to wander around and climb random rock formation for some fun hiking and photos. The Lawrence House itself was pretty uneventful (appeared to be a run-down structure built with rocks), but the surrounding rocks provided the main attraction.
Panorama Sand Dune: This was a location in the desert with a small hill to get a full panorama of the surrounding formations and desert. This was pretty isolated with fewer tourists so we took this time to get some photos of us walking through the desert without anyone else photo bombing us.
Overall opinion:
If you enjoy the outdoors and want a chance to see nice sunsets, ride on camels, enjoy local food, and get a glimpse of stars, I would recommend making your way to Wadi Rum. The day excursions seemed a bit touristy for us and were nothing to write home about, but the day trip to Jabal Umm ad Dami provided an amazingly unique experience. The marriage proposal under the stars was a memory we will never forget, so Wadi Rum will always hold a place in our hearts.
Amman
Daylight
Jerash (2-3 hours minimum)
30 miles north of Amman you will find Jerash, an ancient city found to be populated originally around the 8th century AD. In the following Hundreds of years, this city had changed rulers and been destroyed in large portions. A lot of the city is still under excavation today from what we could see and is still well maintained and celebrated. Today, Jerash is the second most popular attraction in Joran after Petra. Although we were unable to spend much time here, we still enjoyed wandering the grounds and taking photos. We were told to leave around 4:30pm and were the last ones out of the grounds. On the way out we got some amazing sunset photos of the city and the grounds without people in the photos. Although we didn’t have time to join a tour group or spend time shopping, you can spend a lot of time walking these grounds.
Amman citadel (2 hours)
This historical site lies near the center of downtown Amman and is known for being one of the most continuously inhabited sites in the world (~7000 years starting in 5500BC). The major sites within the grounds are the Temple of Hercules, a Byzantine Church, and the Umayyad Palace. Given this whole area was being used for centuries before the modern era, it is unique to walk around and view the well-maintained grounds that had gone through natural disasters and battles. There is a museum that captures items from across this era that really puts this into perspective. The Jordan pass was accepted here but we walked in without anyone checking.
Hashem (Local Dinner)
Honestly, one of my favorite meals on this whole trip. After driving back late from the Dead Sea we knew we were headed for Hashem and it lived up to the hype. This place was recommended by a friend who had previously been to Amman. Hashem was recommended to them by a local, so we knew we had to give it a try. We arrived at 10:15 pm thinking they would almost be closed. We sat down and were surprised by how many people were there. After about 5 min the place filled up with more locals who were eating even later than us. This was clearly a popular place. When we sat down the waiter, who knew almost no English, didn’t even hand us menus. He just knew a few words in English that went like this…”Falafel, Eggplant, Hummus, Pita, Veggies, Beans.” It took us a few seconds to realize what was happening. It was a family-style restaurant that just serves a smorgasbord of these foods he was rattling off and we had to decide what we wanted him to bring to the table. We ordered all of it since we were starving and we are glad we did. He delivered all the food he mentioned leaving us with 8 plates of food on our table. The pita bread was the largest I have ever seen providing more than enough pita for all of us (we could each only get through one piece). We dug in and all shared hummus with meat, tomatoes plate, carrots and pickles, eggplant, beans, falafel, and French fries. Not only was food delicious, the beans were unique and incredible, the total bill was about $3/ea.
If you manage to make it here for lunch or an earlier dinner, there is also lots of shopping in this area, so you could spend a few hours here eating and walking around.
Dead Sea (Full Day)
Lunch
We ate lunch at Kempinski Hotel Ishtar. We were not staying here, but we entered the grounds to have lunch and it was very much worth the trip. We gave our rental car to Valet after getting through the main gate (very fancy), and drove a golf cart to the restaurant which had a nice infinity pool overlooking the Dead Sea. The golf cart ride alone was a sight to behold and it took us through the grounds of this exotic and extravagant hotel.
Viewing Spot
Another 30 min drive south and we found ourselves at a beautiful lookout with almost no tourists or locals. From this location, we were able to view the salt buildup completely covering the shores and get unique photos that are not available at the beaches at the popular dead sea resorts. We were happy with how this trip turned out given it was less traveled and a lot cheaper than paying to stay at the resorts.
The downside with only viewing the Dead sea from here was that we were not able to get in the water because we did not have access to showers and facilities to properly clean after being in the water. Post dead sea bath is required.
Spa
We went to the Spa at the Dead Sea Hotel, because it seemed to be the most affordable and offered a package deal for three sessions.
We started the spa with a salt scrub. They scrubbed our whole body with a salt mixture. This is intended to remove dead skin and help the growth of regenerated cells. This helps with skin tone and texture. After a shower, they followed with a mud bath. They completely covered us with warm mud and minerals and then wrapped us up in plastic blankets and left us for 15 min. Mud baths are said to help keep the skin healthy and even alleviate muscle pains. This was one of the weirdest feelings I have ever experienced. For what should have been a weird and awkward experience being wrapped in plastic, getting really warm, not being able to itch anywhere, and having a burning face since I shaved earlier in the day; it was surprisingly relaxing. With the lights dimmed down and nowhere to go, it became pretty relaxing and I would have fallen asleep had my face not been on figurative fire. I heard heavy breathing coming from the table next to me and realized Allison was out.
After another shower, we walked to the salt room for an hour massage.
