365 Days of Falafel: Stephen's Visit from Qatar: Day 4 Petra

The night before we decided last minute that we would go to Petra the next morning. Michael had to work, so it was just Stephen and I. The bus left at 6:30 am; only one bus a day. I figured if we were out at the road by 6, we could catch a taxi with plenty of time to get to the bus station. Well, turned out that many taxi drivers don't get up that early. With much difficulty and a good bit of running we finally caught one at about 6:22. We had to hurry! I was telling the taxi driver in my limited Arabic that we were in a hurry because we needed to catch the bus to Petra. Thankfully he got us there with just a few minutes to spare. There were two stations right next to each other, so I ran huffing and puffing into the first and asked if this was where I bought the tickets to Petra. He calmly said no, the next, but "Don't worry miss, that bus leaves at 7." Whew! So I went to the other station and asked for two tickets to Petra, please. We got our tickets and sat down in the waiting room. There was a bus outside already but I figured we had a half an hour, might as well wait in the air conditioned room. Well, at 6:30 that bus took off. I panicked and ran to the counter. "Was that our bus to Petra?!" No, no, he assured me, your bus leaves at 7. Right, okay. So I sat back down for about 60 seconds. Then I turned to Stephen and asked, "Have I been saying Aqaba this whole time?!" "Well, yes, " he said, "I just figured you knew what you were doing." That was our bus to Petra that had just left! All morning I had been telling everyone Aqaba, Aqaba, Aqaba.... not Petra. Sure enough, our tickets were taking us to Aqaba. I ran to the counter and lamely told the man that I didn't want to go to Aqaba; I wanted to go to Petra. "Well, that was your bus, miss....uh, hold on just a moment." Bless his soul, he called the bus driver and had him wait for us at a station across town. We jumped in a taxi (thankfully, they were all up by this time) and raced to the bus. When we finally got nestled on the correct bus, I realized I didn't buy return tickets! And you can't buy them in Petra. I apologetically told the bus driver that I was an idiot and could he hold on for one more minute. A couple minutes later I was back on the bus exhausted from the struggle I had just had with my own brain. I had definitely lost it. Thankfully I can blame all of this on 'Pregnancy Brain,' right? And the funny thing is that I was reading just 2 days earlier in What to Expect When You're Expecting about crazy ladies and their pregnancy brains, claiming to myself that that was clearly not me. I guess I've joined the club.

But despite me losing my brains, we made it to Petra. Here is the entrance, still heavily guarded.

The narrow passage, called the siq, that leads to Petra.

Camels, the Treasury, and more camels.

I don't know what my obsession was with camels that day. You have to admit they are pretty cool looking animals, although they stink to high heaven. 10 points if you can find Stephen in this picture.

The Treasury is the first sight you see after coming out of the siq. It is huge and absolutely breathtaking.

We were in awe at the size and scale of the whole city. You could spend days exploring this area.

We did all the exploring we could fit into our limited time. Our first expedition was to the High Place of Sacrifice.

It turned out to be quite the hike.

But the view was worth it.

Can you believe it, this boy bought a rock... for a dinar. He bought a rock.

You can hardly tell but there is a young Bedouin boy asleep on that rock. I'm not quite sure how he got there.

The lady Stephen bought the rock from, asleep as well.

The High Place of Sacrifice.

The Theater.

This little ole lady made it all the way to the Monastery in heels! I was impressed. One boy with a donkey told us there were something like 900 steps up to the Monastery. I didn't believe him, until we practically ran the whole way up. We were running out of time and I was determined to see it. We should have taken him up on the donkey ride.