Jordan: Petra

Our reason for including Jordan with Egypt was specifically to visit the famous carved rocks at Petra, and today we do that! It’s a short drive from our hotel to the entrance, but then a long and fabulous walk through Siq – this is a geological crack which has then been worn more open by water …

At the end you get your first glimpse of The Treasury, and the narrow passage opens out to a huge and awe inspiring space.

There’s much more to Petra than just this famous carving/building – if you look at the map above you can see that the walk from the entrance through Siq to The Treasury is about half the length, and we now walked much further through the Street of Facades, past the Theatre, and along the Colonnaded Street (Roman built hundreds of years after The Treasury and other structures!)

And from the Colonnaded Street we can visit the [Roman] Great Temple:

Beyond this temple at the end of the Colonnaded Street is Qsar al-Bint one of the few ancient buildings still standing in Petra:

That’s the end of our walk (there is another long walk out to the Monastery but we skipped it); so then the long walk back seeing everything again!

Petra was absolutely worth the journey to Jordan, and is probably worthy of another visit one day …