Today, I joined a tour to visit the North of Amman with four Germans and one Norwegian. My main point of interest was Jerash but it was nice to see the Decapolis city of Umm Qais (Gadara) and Ajlun Castle.

Umm Qais

Umm Qais is quite large and has some nice monuments. The most interesting part for me was some Roman statues hidden in one of the rooms of the visitor center.

Ajlun Castle

Ajlun Castle had a nice cool feeling to it but nothing memorable. As it was the case for Karak earlier in Jordan, I think I have seen too many castles before in France to be moved by the ones in Jordan! They look more like fortresses than romantic castles ;). The “memorable” part is when the driver got lost in between Umm Qais and Ajlun and we ended up driving for 100km of curvy mountain roads in place of the 20km it should have taken. “Maalesh” I told him.

Jerash

Not without loosing his path again :), our driver finally got us to Jerash (Gerasa), another of the ten cities of the Roman Decapolis. Jerash is just an amazingly well conserved and restored Roman city. It is huge with some great monuments.

I visited by myself and it was quite an experience to walk alone in the middle of this full city trying to imagine how busy it could be almost 2000 years ago with chariots and people walking down the amazing colonnaded street making there way through the shops, cooling down by the beautiful Nymphaeum (very elaborated fountain) or engaged in heated discussion in the middle of the enormous forum square.

Other impressive monuments are the hippodrome where they sometimes reenact chariot races and the two amphitheatres where spectacles are still offered during the Jerash festival every year during summer.

The procession path to the temple of Artemis was also impressive and the temple of Zeus must have been quite a place with its 15 meters high columns. This last temple is actually being heavily restored right now and it will definitely look fantastic once it is finished.

And the mind boggling part is that some of the old city is still lost under the current city!

Jerash is the kind of place that can keep me interested and entertained for hours and hours. I would definitely love to come for the festival.

Jerash is the other gem of Jordan and it should definitely not be missed. Rod might say “NYAFRC” but since I have not seen that many of them before, I loved it!

This is all for my exploration of Jordan. Next step is Syria starting with Damascus.