Travel to the Middle and Near East

As a four-decade Certified Travel Agent, international airline employee, researcher, writer, teacher, and photographer, travel, whether for pleasure or business purposes, is definitely a significant plus an integral a part of my life. Some 400 trips to each and every portion on the globe, by way of road, rail, sea, and air, entailed destinations both mundane and exotic. This article is targeted on those from the Middle and Near East.

Turkey:

Turkey, which lies in Europe and Asia, offered a glimpse into its rich antiquity using a tour through Ephesus, the original Greek city situated on the Ionian coast. Constructed inside the 10th century BC on the website of the previous Arzawan capital by Attic and Ionian Greek colonists, it became one with the twelve cities in the Ionian League in the Classical Greek Era and flourished under control from the Roman Republic in 129 BC.

Extensively canvased on foot, it progressively revealed the elements of its past, like the House from the Virgin Mary, the Temple of Hadrianm, the Library of Celsus, plus the Commercial Agora in the ancient section.

The Live Ephesus using the Ephesians show brought its past to life from the present.

A buffet lunch in Restaurant Le Wagon, a wooden, A-framed building with tree branch support beams, brick and wooden walls, along with a red tile roof, featured potato and bean salad, eggplant, stuffed grape leaves, black olives, pickles, phyllo dough cheese rolls, grilled meatballs with tomato sauce, grilled chicken, yellow rice, and baklava.

Post-meal attractions encompassed the Ephesus Museum along with the St. John Monument, along with the immersion into Turkey’s ancient past was capped that has a Turkish carpet making demonstration in Kusadasi.

Jordan:

Surrounded by Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, Jordan, home country of some other one of my airlines, offered a way to experience and be aware of the history, culture, cuisine, and individuals behind the carrier I partially represented, initially through its modern capital, Amman, built on seven hills or “Jebels.

Mohammed, a colleague I chance-met upon arrival at Queen Alia International Airport, immediately displayed the Jordanians’ signature hospitality by volunteering in order to meet me within hotel everyday and escort me for the significant sights.

Offered local confectionaries in bakeries, including delicate cookies or cream- and cheese-filled Kanafa, I walked within his shadow once we entered the Golden Souk, perusing local wares and handicrafts, after which visited Citadel Hill, located 850 meters above sea level on Jebel Al Qala’a and one on the original seven to possess served as Amman’s foundation.

The Roman Amphitheater, in the foot of Jabal Al-Jofah over a hill opposite the Citadel, would be a 6,000-seat, second-century Roman theater, dating back to your era when Amman was generally known as Philadelphia.

Other sights included the single-dome, four-minaret King Hussein Mosque, the largest inside country.

North in the city was Jerash, one in the ten cities in the Decapolis, where splendors of Rome’s frontier provinces were preserved through theaters, colonnaded streets, baths, and temples. A knife, gyrating around when inserted between column joints, established that no cement or some other binding substance ended up used at their juncture.

“Jerash could very well be the best preserved and many complete provincial Roman cities anywhere inside world,” in line with its description. “To walk through the standard city would be to step back in to the world from the second century across the southeastern frontier from the Roman Empire. It is the most spectacular of those towns, ten ones were loosely allied in a association of cities referred to as the ‘Decapolis.’

“Called ‘Gerasa’ in Roman times, it was vital not only because of its individual monuments, but also for the strict and well-preserved town plan, built across the colonnaded main street and lots of intersecting side ones. Its most noteworthy monuments included the Cardo, the South Theatre, the Temple of Zeus, the Oval Piazza, or Forum, Hadrian’s Arch, the Nymphaeum, the Artemis Temple Complex, and also the smaller North Theatre, or Odeon.