We started out the day in the religious pilgrimage site of Mt. Nebo. Mt Nebo’s most famous citizen is probably Moses–you know that guy from the Bible that parted the Red Sea and wandered the desert for 40 years? Well, he died in Mt Nebo within site of the Promised Land, so he’s buried somewhere there in Mt. Nebo. But no one knows exactly where he’s buried. From where we were, we could see (supposedly) the Holy Land. In fact, we were so close to Israel that we got a welcome to Israel text from Tmobile (just another way that Tmobile has let me down this trip. This is starting to be a theme!)

Anyways, we went to a church there with the most amazingly preserved floor tile mosaics. The building itself is plain, ugly, and quite new (less than 20 years old). It’s actually a Unesco World Heritage Site, our 2nd of the trip. How are these floor mosaics so well preserved? I know the answer!! I was actually listening. So, way back in the day, they made this floor mosaic to represent the circle of life, but it is like hunting, then farming, etc. and not Mufasa holding Baby Simba up over the wildebeest Circle of Life. Then, there was this King who wanted to destroy all religious icons because people were praying to the icons instead of to God. But, the priest in charge of these floor mosaics wanted to protect them– so they built another floor on top of them– with geometric and flower patterns. This was like in the 700s. These floors were just hidden in plain site until 2003. In 2003 they discovered the floor tiles underneath the geometric ones (which are now hanging on the walls.) Hence, you have perfect floor mosaics from the 700s that no one knew about until 20 years ago. Apparently even before that discovery in 2003, this was a special holy site, because of Moses and all, and it even warranted a visit from the Pope. He planted an olive tree. Even though today Jordan is 92% Islamic, it is like the birthplace of Christianity, and chock full of holy sites and churches.

Our next stop was Madaba to see some more mosaic tiles. This one was a map of religious sites– in Jordan, Israel, Syria, and Egypt. This floor tile looks like you would expect something from the 700s to look like– a little worse for the wear– with large chunks of it missing and such. This floor mosaic was badly damaged in the great earthquake of 747. Yes, we are lamenting damage that occurred 1500 years ago, several centuries before the Crusades. Evidently, the Pope used this floor map to determine that Bethany was in Jordan and not in Israel. Maybe he decided that on his Jubilee tour in 2000? That would have been a really busy trip– planting trees at Mt Nebo and settling biblical land disputes all in one trip?! I don’t know how he would have had any spare moments to take selfies.

The mosaics are made of different colors of stones. They ate not colored ceramic tiles which is what I always thought of when I thought of mosaics. So they are all natural colors, but there’s still some blue and green stones out there.

As amazing as all of this is, it is all kinda overshadowed by our evening activity–Petra by night!!! Woo hoo! So for “Petra by night”, you go as far as the Treasury which is where Indiana Jones went searching for the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (by far the best Indiana Jones movie). The path is lit by luminaries. I don’t know how many millions of candles they go through every day or how many people it takes to set them all up because it’s about a mile and a half from the entrance gate to the Treasury. And, well, luminaries are not very bright. thetwinsontour were super glad to have handy little flashlights that they always pack and never need! Anyways there’s millions of people all racing to get there, and thetwinsontour were the only people stopping to take pictures! However, at times it seemed like some of those French people really wanted to take us out for stopping! Or maybe they just couldn’t see us in the dark, but I’m pretty sure they just wanted to knock us over.

Then once you make it to the Treasury, they make everyone sit down. There’s a few rows of folding stools, but most people have to sit on long plastic beach mats. Maybe that’s why everyone was running? So they could sit on a folding camping stool? They light the facade up with colorful lights. We did discover that the blue light was not bright enough for good selfies in the dark. The white and pink seemed to work the best. So there we are sitting on mats over the sand and wiggling around trying to get the best selfie angle without blocking the view for orhers. It is difficult because of people’s big heads and giant IPads held up in the air. There was a mini concert of people playing the flute, but that was not great. They brought around cups of tea for everyone while we “enjoyed” the music, and then a guy came out to tell the history of Petra or something like that. I am really good at ignoring people talking like that, so he could have said anything.

Lots of people got up and left early (CRAZY! Right?) so we were able to squeeze up a bit closer and get different selfie angles. But really, all we had to do was wait a while longer til it was over, and then we were able to stand up and get right next to the Treasury. The proper photographer pose is to hold the flashlight in your right hand directly over your head to lightly illuminate your subject and then hold your phone in the left. Voila! Perfectly lit night picture. Kind of. It takes a lot of practice, for the common person at least, thetwinsontour got this stuff down!

Ok, that’s more than enough about Day 4.

Love,

thetwinsontour