Petra Day 1

Our walk to the Monastery took a long time...we took quite a few detours, explored a lot of caves and rooms, but in the end, we did make it to the Monastery. Andrew's favorite thing about the Monastery was that there were some lookout points. It took a while to hike up to the look out points but the view was worth it. We looked out over the desert and watched until the desert blurred into the horizon. It was kind of strange because there wasn't really a defined horizion, just a blur. It was beautiful and very peaceful. We tried to stay away from other tourists the whole time and did a pretty good job of it, too!

On the way to the Monastery, we saw...

The Lion Triclimium was in a little canyon off the path on the way to the Monastery. It was really cool. There are two statues of lions on either side of the doorway. It was worth the extra little hike to get there.

The Lion Triclinium

Shortly after the Lion Triclinium, you come to the Monastery. It is quite majestic but definately not as ornate as the Treasury. We climbed inside the Monastery and also hiked up some hills to get some better pictures.

After hiking down from the Monastery, Andrew and I were pretty tired, so we hiked over to the Byzantine Chapel and took a nap. We didn't even see the mosaics in the chapel...we just ate lunch and then napped. We both got quite burned because the shade, that we had been sleeping in, moved while we were sleeping.

The Byzantine Chapel

After we woke from our nap, we walked over to the Great Temple to look at it. We were both so tired still that we didn't really feel like walking up all those stairs...When we took this picture we had already walked up a set of stairs...we never did make it to the top level. There were a whole bunch of toppled columns up there but you can see those anywhere around here so we just snapped a picture and left.

We had to explore the Qasr al-Bint (the Temple of the Girl) though. It has been relatively untouched and still has full archways in tact. Andrew climbed up a long staircase that led to the third floor of the Qasr al-Bint. Nancy stayed on the ground floor because the stairwell was dark and Andrew said that there were a lot of spiderwebs up there...as well as some big spiders. Nancy didn't feel up to walking up 3 flights of stairs just to get covered in spider webs.

Arch of the Qasr al-Bint

Nancy in rubble of Qasr al-Bint

All in all, they had a wonderful day and returned to their hotel and tried to find pizza to eat because they were really bummed out that the hotel restaurant was only serving fish. They took a taxi and asked to go to Pizza Hut because supposedly there was one in Wadi-Musa. Au Contraire. The taxi driver took them to the nearest pizza place, "Pizza Prima," and told them to get out. Andrew said that Pizza Prima is not Pizza Hut...drive on. So, the taxi driver took them to a pizza place farther down the road and said, "Here...Pizza Hut." Andrew again insisted that this other place was not Pizza Hut so the driver drove around the block back to Pizza Prima and said, "This is Pizza Hut. Get out! 2 JD!" Andrew gave him 1.5 JD and they left the cab. Andrew and Nancy were upset with the taxi driver because they had been ripped off...again...but the pizza they had was good...even though it had Vienna sausage on it.