Eid Mubarak

Enjoy!

Happy Diwali

A Happy Diwali to all my Hindu buddies and lurkers.

Birthday Boy

It's my birthday! And it's the weekend! Yayyy! It's still Ramadan though, and BetterArf has a rehearsal from 8 o'clock tonight. So the plan is to do Iftar at the MOE Kempinski. I think she has invited a bunch of folks to join us, although this is meant to be a closely-guarded secret.

BetterArf got me some fab presents, including Terry Pratchett's latest book 'Wintersmith' (I love the way he always brings out a new one just in time for my birthday), and Gordon Ramsay's 'Secrets' - full of totally inspirational recipes...can't wait to get stuck in.

HSBC sent me a text message to wish me a happy birthday, but they left out the bit 'and here is some free money to help you celebrate'. Again.

And how old am I? Put it this way: this is the last year I'll be able to describe myself as 'forty-something'.

Old. Peculier.

We tootled off to Scunthorpe the next day and had a minor scrape with the ticket inspector who said our tickets weren't valid but he'd let us off this time. BetterArf's mum and dad both live in Scunthorpe, separately. First stop was mother-in-law's, and after a quick cup of tea we headed off to a nice local pub for lunch. This pub has Theakston's Old Peculier on draught and I thought I'd try it. I've had OP in the past, and enjoyed it, but I really wasn't prepared for this. It was absolutely superb! I emptied half the glass with my first sip. Two more sips and it was all gone. The barmaid was still doing the rest of the order and looked with puzzlement at my empty glass. I ordered another one. Oh it was marvellous!

We spent the afternoon doing a spot of shopping, and I made a tortilla in the evening. This was the only cooking that I got to do on the entire trip.

The next day we headed across town to the daddy-in-law's. He's an excellent cook with a well-stocked drinks cupboard and a broadband connection. What more could anyone ask for! He very kindly drove us over to the house of our writer friends, but they were out. We left a note to let them know we were in town and gave them the phone number at daddy-in-law's. We didn't hear from them till the next day though because that's when they found the note.

So the next day was our last full one in England. We went to see 'Kate Walker' and her husband that evening and had a lovely time. As always, we came away laden with books - our wedding present from them was a copy of every book she had published. We only see them every two or three years so there were about six new titles to catch up with. Plus, hubbie has recently started getting published so we got three of his books too! Of course I wasn't worried about the damn baggage allowance!

And that, dear munchkins, is about all I have to say about our holiday. Apart from it was totally fab and I loved it. Farmer-girl loved it too.

Leaving Valencia

On our last full night in Valencia we stayed up very late - reluctant to miss anything that was going on. Actually we spent quite a bit of that day and night wandering around and shooting bad video - if I ever get time I'll edit it and stick it on me blog. Staying up late was, of course, a baaaaad idea; we had to be up at six to get to the airport. Valencia's airport is only about a ten minute drive from the town centre. There's a direct bus that goes from behind the railway station, about a five minute walk from our hostal. But we had several gigatons of luggage so we took a taxi.

In view of the ongoing security mess as a result of the alleged terrorist plot we wanted to get to the airport as early as possible. But the check-in desk was only going to open two hours before the scheduled take-off time so we had an hour and a half to kill before joining the extremely long queue. We had seen posters at the airport explaining that US bound passengers could take nothing on board, but there was no information about UK-bound flights. Eventually, through a combination of the queue grapevine and BetterArf going and asking somebody, we learned that no hand baggage would be allowed on board. Bugger. I had one backpack containing my laptop, the video camera, BetterArf's camera and a couple of mobile phones. I absolutely did not want to lose sight of that bag, and the thought of it being hurled about various baggage-handling areas and then placed in a freezing cold hold did not inspire me with confidence. When we got to the check-in desk we were not surprised that we were overweight. We explained that two of the bags would have been carry-ons but they charged us for four kilos extra anyway, which begs the question 'is stuff heavier when it's in the hold than when it's in the cabin?' - in the cabin they would not have charged us, but in the hold they did. Theiving barftuds.

Getting through security was the next, very slow, process, and we didn't have time for anything because we had to get straight on the plane.

The flight was OK though, and pretty soon we were at Manchester Airport. The baggage took forever to come through, having been screened yet again, but I was pleased to see that none of the cops or customs peeps wanted a chat. Buddy Brian was waiting to chauffeur us to Liverpool, only slightly worried that we might have been arrested. We spent a couple of days in Scouseland, got rained on a bit, and tried to organise transport across the Pennines.

Buskers and Beggars

Buskers (street musicians) are one of the things that add life to any street scene. Which is why Dubai doesn't allow them. Valencia has a fair collection of buskers, most of them not very good. The preferred instrument of torture is the accordion, followed by guitar and voice. One guy caught our attention as being particularly bad - he could barely play his guitar, and his singing voice was just awful. He always tried to play Beatles songs, but I don't think he knew any English so he was just approximating the sounds of the words. One day he turned up at the beach, accompanied by a fiddle player. The fiddler was pretty good and we were contemplating throwing some money at them. But then matey-boy launched into his Beatles repertoire and we quickly changed our minds.

Beggars are always a pest in any city. Valencia has some interesting ones. There's the well-dressed guy who kneels on a little cushion all day long, head bowed in prayer and cup held out. There's a fair number of old gypsy ladies who tell you sob stories that you can't understand of course because you don't spikka da Valenciana, and finish up by going into whiny mode. I should tell you that if I was ever going to beat someone up it would be because they whined at me. One day a troupe of three young gypsy girls emerged from their stretch limo and began their shift. The one that reached our table first was immaculately dressed and had a cream leather handbag with matching shoes. When she spoke you were dazzled by the solid gold teeth. She quickly got into whiny mode and so she was sent on her way. Half an hour later she was back and I explained that I gave already.

One strange character that we saw around town most days or nights was a middle-aged woman. She wore a smart sleeveless black dress that got more dusty and shapeless as the days went on. When we first saw her we thought she was just drunk and trying to find her way home. Later it seemed that maybe she had no home any more. But she was still drunk. She never asked anyone for money, but she did like to have a good old shout at no one in particular. Most odd.

There were also two or three guys who would patrol the town centre trying to sell assorted trinkets - bangles, silly hats, furry dice etc. I've never wanted furry dice in my car, so of course BetterArf bought me some. They look very nice dangling from the rear-view mirror of my Beemer. Tasteful, like.

¡Hola, Chicos, Chicas!

(This post was written on August 12th)

Now that we've finished our course we have a couple of days just to hang out without worrying about getting to school on time, do homework or pretend to be able to speak Spanish. So today was Saturday, and you realise that the Spanish do weekends a bit differently. I don't know quite what they do, but they certainly don't swamp the town centre and do shopping on a Saturday, and the place is pretty quiet on Sundays too, although there is a bit of a flea market in the morning. I had to do some internet stuff this morning while BetterArf visited a laundry (what a star!). Then we met up for lunch and headed off to the beach. Lunch was a bit tricky because we were too early - Spaniards don't think about eating lunch until 1.30 pm at the earliest. We were about an hour early and both starving so we hit on the idea that El Corte Inglés might serve food on an all-day basis. We were right. El Corte Inglés, by the way, is a hugely popular chain of department stores: they have five massive stores in Valencia alone. We finished our lunch with a slab of This Chocolate Cake Will Almost Certainly Kill You.

Then we visited the music department of El Corte Inglés to see if we could pick up a CD. One of our Spanish teachers had challenged our intellects by playing us a couple of songs by Spanish band Amaral: she gave us the lyrics to some of the songs with odd words missing. Our task was to guess what the missing words were. We had no chance of working out the answers, but we quite liked the sound of Amaral, so we wanted to see if we could get one of their CDs. As it happened our quest was ultra-succesful - the CD Pajaros En La Cabeza (Birds In The Head?) was on special offer, reduced to €6.90 from about €18.

Having completed our shopping expedition we took the Metro to the beach. Valencia has beautiful beaches, but today it was also having a bit of a hurricane. It was somewhat unpleasant so we left and returned to town. Back at the hostal, BetterArf had a snooze while I read The Guardian (which by some magic of technology is available from about 10am on the day of publication), and had a glance through the weekly Costa Brava Times. This is an English-language rag that will be very useful for us, but the letters page is just like that of 7Days! It's full of stuff from whingeing Brits. Ick.

One of the recurring topics on our Spanish course was what and when the Spanish eat. And drink. Basically they just nibble at stuff all day long, and then stuff themselves silly just before bedtime. Interestingly, people in the Valencia region have the longest life-expectancy of anywhere in Europe. This is attributed to the diet: hardly any meat, lots of olive oil, no butter, plenty of salads, lots of garlic, and, most importantly, plenty of good red wine.

Well, I know why they don't eat a lot of meat in Spain: they have no idea of how to cook it. I had a steak at a supposedly decent restaurant during our first week. I don't recall ordering warmed-up shoe leather, but that's what I got. If we managed to get to the University an hour before the class started we could get a good lunch for about €5 at the Campus Caff. But the evening nibbles make up for any shortcomings in the meat department. Tapas are one of the world's great culinary inventions, and the other one is pintxhos. There is a bar called Lizzaran that sells these. They are a Basque speciality consisting of a slice of stick bread (baguette) topped with pretty much anything you can think of - a slice of ham or salami with a couple of olives or potato chunks - smoked salmon with cream cheese or blue cheese - a red pepper stuffed with tuna - a hunk of tortilla. Lizzaran has at least thirty different combinations and the one thing they have in common is that the toppings are stuck onto the bread with a toothpick. You fill your plate with as many pintxhos as you want, and at the end they count the number of toothpicks and charge you €1 each.

Valencia's main claim to fame in the food department is, of course, Paella. I'm going to be a bit heretical here and say that I am not very impressed. We already knew that the 'paellas' you get at most tourist restaurants are rubbish. If the restaurant has a poster or menu featuring photos of the different types (including a curry one), you know that you will get factory-made junk that is rapidly heated in a special machine. We mentioned this to one of our teachers and she recommended we try La Rosa or La Pepica at the beach.

So we took the tram down to the beach one day after school and walked a long way in the wrong direction until we came to a tourist information office. They sent us back the way we had come, and eventually we arrived at a terrace of about thirty restaurants. La Rosa was the second one on the terrace and it was closed. We walked along the whole length of this terrace, and everything was closed. This was about 8.15 pm. The last restaurant was La Pepica where a waiter told us they would be opening at 8.30. So we went away for a bit, and returned at 8.45. The place was heaving, but they gave us a little table. It's quite a smart place that has been going for about 100 years and has a picture of the owner with King Juan-Carlos. The waiters are all very smartly-dressed, and mostly in their fifties.

We ordered Paella Valenciana and when it was ready the waiter showed it to us in its pan and then took it away to stick it on plates (our table being too small to accomodate the huge flat dish). I manage to eat about one-third of mine, and the waiter seemed to be personally insulted that I'd left so much. Well, two things. A: there was far too much and when I am full I stop eating. And B. I didn't really like it. Ah well.

Some of the work we've had to do on our course is to compare our home town/city to Valencia. Odious I know, but our teachers and classmates have been very interested to hear what we have to say about Dubai. And I have been very interested to see how much emotion I keep bottled up about life in Dubai. You all know that we made the decision to leave Dubai last summer when we visited Valencia and Barcelona. And you know that we will be leaving next summer and moving to Spain. This is a city and country that works. Traffic management and public transport are superb. The place is steeped in art and culture. The people are happy and relaxed. The environment and way of life are very healthy. It is a true democracy. It is vibrant. Pensioners are called 'jubilantes'. Life is for living and enjoying. I love it.

City of Arts And Sciences

Of course, Valencia is not all old stuff. This collection of new stuff is Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, designed by Santiago Calatrava.



The building above is the Palacio de las Artes. It's covered in white ceramic tiles and I think they've been having a bit of a space shuttle experience because a lot of them are being replaced right now.



The blob in the middle (above) is called the Hemisferic. I don't actually know what goes on in there. In fact I don't really know what happens in any of these buildings because I didn't have time to explore inside any of them.



I love the way the shallow pools that surround all of the buildings cast a blue-green glow onto the white walls.



The structure at the rear of the picture above is called the Umbracle, and it exists solely to create a bit of shade for the trees and plants. Oh, and also to look gorgeous.







The building on the right, above, is the Museo de las Ciencias.



There is another section to the City of Art and Sciences devoted to Oceanography - more buildings in the same vein - but I didn't have time to get to them. Amazing stuff eh? Actually one of my reasons for wanting to move to Spain is that public services are excellent, and the authorities don't seem to have any qualms about spending money to get outstanding results - if this was in the UK it would be a collection of concrete-block warehouses with maybe a few scruffy lawns around it and miles and miles of car park.

Old Valencia

We are staying in the Historic Centre of Valencia. It's packed with beautiful old buildings, most of which have been sensitively restored. On many sites you can see façades (and in some cases side-ades and back-ades) that are being supported by complex steel mechanisms while the entire inside of the building is demolished. Then they build new floors and walls, and incorporate modern plumbing, electrics and lifts. This process in the UK is called 'façadism' and is much despised by architects. But here it works to preserve the visual unity of a beautiful old city while at the same time providing usable office and residential space.

And while the work is ongoing there is no reason for it to look rubbish. In the pic below, the pinkish facade is actually a full-size print of what the finished building will look like, complete with people waving out of windows and probably a dog peeing on a lamp-post.



One of the main features of old Valencia is the Plaza Del Ayuntamiento - Town Hall Square. In any city, it is always worth looking up at the skyline: this is where the architects go crazy, and they've certainly done that in Valencia. We have domes, towers, turrets and all manner of bizarre stuff. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the Central Post Office building which is a magnificent example of corporate ambitions expressed on the building itself - we are talking statues of wingéd runners, trains and ships. Magnificent!



Another main feature of old Valencia is the Cathedral area. The cathedral itself was built in a series of phases, several centuries apart. There are plazas on three sides of it, and networks of narrow streets all around. Gorgeous.







In my next post we'll see a complete contrast: the City of Arts and Sciences.This is a set of buildings that would not look out of place in Dubai.

Students Again

Monday morning, we were due at the school at 8am. They do a Sorting Hat thing to decide who's intermediate and who's advanced. Beginners can usually sort themselves out, but we had to wait till midday to see what class we were in and get our timetable.

We had a hell of a time getting to the school. We knew it was in the Galileo Galilei Building on the campus of Universidad Politecnico, and we knew that there was a Metro station called U Politecnico. So we tried to get to that, but we had to change Metro lines and we messed it up. We started walking, but time was running out so we took a taxi. This proved to be a wise move as the campus is gigantic, and actually has four Metro stations that serve it!

We arrived at 0815 and were a bit confused that all the signs were for Don Quijote. We had booked through Estudio Hispanico - we'd seen Don Quijote, but EH were somewhat cheaper. However, it turned out the EH are merely agents for DQ. We were given an introductory chat and a tour of the campus while the timetables were being sorted out. Finally (at about 1230) we learned that we were in the afternoon session, and our first class would start at 1pm.
Our first teacher was a young lady named Maria-José, and she just started talking at us in Spanish. We all introduced ourselves, in Spanish that we just learned a few minutes earlier (yo soy Keefieboy - ka-eh-eh-effeh-ee-bay-o-y grecia). In our group of eight there are two English, one Welsh, one Indonesian, two Germans, an Italian and a Luxemburger. Six are girls, two are boy. Four are left-handed!

We belted through a whole load of stuff, had a half-hour break, and then we met our other Profesor, Llorenç (pronounced Jorence). This is where we discover that that the school operates on the good-cop, bad-cop principle. With a twist. Maria-José looks and sounds cute, but does the hard grammar, gives us lots of homework and expects us to do it. Llorenç looks and sounds a bit dodgy, but tells us all about the rude stuff, gets sidetracked into lots of conversational cul-de-sacs and is generally a good laugh.

Our first day ends with a welcome party. We have to assemble at the school, and then we walk to a bar. BetterArf and I were quite happy because we had just discovered that instead of spending € 1.20 apiece for each trip, we could get a multi-use ticket that is good for 10 trips and costs € 5.60. Yeeha!

The venue for the party is called El (la?) Amsteleria. I don't know if it is owned by Amstel, but you can't get a Carlsberg or a Cruzcampo or an Estrella Dam there. They have a bunch of tables equipped with metered pumps, so you don't have to go to the bar: you do it yourself and pay at the end. Beer, sangria and Agua de Valencia was all free for the first couple of hours. Near the end I wanted a bit more beer and was more than pleasantly surprised to be charged only € 2 for half a liter - regular bars would charge about 5. The joys of studenthood!

Meet Me In Valencia

I had to be at Manchester Airport no later than 6am, so I'd agreed with Brian that we would rise at 5. I set the alarm on my mobile phone for that time, and jumped out of bed as soon as it went off. Made myself a cup of tea, and was getting a little bit worried that I wasn't hearing sounds of anyone else stirring. I was about to go and wake Brian when I noticed that the kitchen wall-clock was saying 0210. Damn! I'd forgotten to change the time on my phone!. So I went back to bed for another couple of hours, but didn't really sleep well. Hey ho.

Anyhoo, the appointed time came and off we went. No problems at all, until I was at the Jet2 check-in desk. They have about six desks and were open for passengers for all of their destinations except Valencia. Valencia passengers got the message 'wait in lounge'. The queue was enormous and it got to about forty five minutes before we were due to depart. I asked at the info desk what was going on and they told me to get in the queue. I did, and it crawled along. After twenty mnutes of not moving very much, a Jet2 staffer arrived and pulled all Valencia passengers out of the queue and sent us to a different desk where we were processed in a hurry. I was mighty pissed off because I really needed some caffeine and a little bit of food. No chance, no time. Straight on the plane and off we go. This being a budget airline, there's no actual food, but I did buy a small bottle of water and a miniscule pack of Pringles for about 98 million quid.



I had called Offspring to make sure he'd met his Mamá: he had, but she'd gone off to try to sort out some accomodation for us. By the way, my Vodafone chip from last year that still had ten quid of credit on it, no longer works. So I got me a Virgin Mobile one instead.

The flight to Valencia only takes a couple of hours, and after I'd picked up my suitcase (yeehaa!), I got a bus into town. As it happened, this bus terminated at the Railway Station, which was where I'd agreed to meet the fambly. And there they were! Marvlious. Slightly less marvlious was that the hostal we'd stayed at last year (39 Euros a night for the three of us) were now asking for 75 Euros - claiming this to be a special rate because we had now become regulars. But BetterArf had found another place. Very centrally located, air-conditioned, 45 Euros per night. And as a bonus for our get-skinny campaign, up four flights of stairs and no lift.

Gifts were exchanged. Offspring seemed less than thrilled to recieve a cuddly Modhesh ('I wanted a mosque alarm clock'). BetterArf had got me the Espanol version of Pterry Pratchett's Feet Of Clay- Pies De Barro, on the basis that I know all of his books word for word, and it would be easy for me to understand. Sadly Feet Of Clay is one that I had read once or twice, but do not actually own a copy of. Well, I do now.

Greetings From Valencia

OK, we´re all here! Having a great time. In total shock from four hours of intensive Spanish every day. No time to blog - maybe at the weekend (bit weird, it´s Saturday & Sunday!).

Adios.

Safe and Sound in Engerland

Phew, made it! Not that I didn't think I would, but it was an incredibly long trip. From leaving my apartment at 1 a.m. till meeting my buddy at Manchester Airport was fifteen hours - the first few hours of which were spent hanging around at Dubai Airport being awake when I should have been asleep.

Note to self: don't use Turkish Airlines on this route again. Not that there's anything wrong with Turkish - I've flown with plenty worse airlines. I hadn't realised that Istanbul was so far from Dubai - it was five hours, and then almost four for the second leg to Manchester.

I bought a beer at Istanbul Airport. Paid with a ten pound note. Got a five-dollar bill and some Euro coins as change (anything's better than a few million Turkish Lira!).

Arriving at Manchester almost killed me. I had to walk about a mile through non-airconditioned, airless corridors. No trolleys anywhere, and no travelators. Spoilt Dubai brat I am.

For the first time in many many years, UK Passport Control not only actually looked at my passport, they entered the number into a computer!

I was mildly astonished to see my suitcase turn up on the carousel at Manchester, and headed off down the green channel past swarms of customs officers and cops. The last one of this gaggle wanted a little chat. He wondered where I was going, and very helpfully checked my ticket to Spain to make sure it was OK. He completely overlooked the 2 litres of spirits in my Dubai Duty Free bag (I read on the way through that you are still only allowed 1 litre if you are coming from outside the EU, although for some peculiar reason the allowance is ten litres if you're arriving from inside the EU).

And so to Liverpool. A tour of a few pubs, a Post Office and a noodle house before I faded out and retired for an 'early night' - about 8pm GMT but midnight for my body clock.

And why the rush for the Post Office? My buddy needed to renew his Road Tax. All Brit motorists have to pay 125 quid a year for the privilege of driving on the skinny, congested strips of potholed tarmac that they call roads in the UK. Without an up-to-date Tax Disc you cannot renew your insurance. And without insurance, in Merseyside at least, this is what happens:

Your car is clamped. If you cannot immediately pay the release charges and fix your insurance status, the car is impounded. If the car is worth more than three thousand pounds, the Police sell it and keep the proceeds. If it is worth less than three thousand, they crush it! Amazing - no court proceedings, no appeal, no nothing. We drove past Merseyside Police HQ where we saw a collection of half-a-dozen impounded vehicles on display outside. Sadly today there were no crushed car cubes to be seen. Apparently the number of untaxed, uninsured vehicles on the roads has plummeted!

So, a full day in Scouserland today, and then an early flight to Valencia tomorrow.

Counting Down The Days...

...until I leave for my holiday.

Here's the plan: this Friday morning, wee small hours: taxi to Airport, fly to Manchester via Istanbul. My old buddy Brian is picking me up and taking me to his fancy dockside apartment in Liverpool. It'll be about 2pm when we get there so no doubt we will retire to the Baltic Fleet to drink lots of beer. This is not just any old beer - they grow it themselves on the premises.

Two days later, fly to Valencia and try and find BetterArf and Offspring who will have arrived there the day before after a nine-hour bus journey from Granada.

Day after that, begin intensive two-week Spanish language course. Then a few free days in Valencia, followed by six days in England visiting the Northern Rellies, and then back to sunny Dubai.

I've been working all hours for the last few weeks trying to get everything finished before I go. Achieved a major milestone on one project this morning - practical completion. This roughly translates as 'I think it's finished, and if you can't break it then it is finished and here's the bill.'

So I gave myself a few hours off. I went to Madinat Jumeirah and bought myself a big fancy Sony digital camera: a real one with a big fat lens that sticks out, not one o' they tiny jobbies that are smaller than a fag packet. And then I had fish and chips at Left Bank and played with the new toy. Actually, I just read the manual (I know blokes should never admit to doing stuff like that, but there ya go).

And now, if I can stop playing with my new toy...back to work. But only for five days!

Jordan Jollies - Day Eight and a Bit

I've lost track of time on this holiday (having such a great time!). This is basically our last full fambly day - Offspring's flight is at 0330 the next morning, but ours is not until 1930 in the evening of the next day.

Our plan for the day was to drive back to Madaba from Wadi Mousa. But we had to make a few stops en route. The first was to return to the Dana Hotel where BetterArf had left (deliberately we think) an embroidered scarf. We obviously had to stay for tea (their tea is unusual - it is flavoured with maramiyah, which tastes like sage). And unlike the two days that we stayed there we were actually able to find the place without any difficulty, and it was actually warm and sunny enough in the village for us to be able to sit out on the untented roof. Jabber, one of the co-op members and their government liaison chap, told us that we could buy the shell of a house in the village for maybe 2000 JD and maybe another 1000 to fit it out. A Canadian guy did just that last summer. It's an amazing offer but we still need to work until we retire (probably aged around 85) and it is too isolated for us to continue our urban-sophisticate jobs. Plus Suleiman had told us that it was difficult to do the subsistence smallholder thing because the village is in a Nature Reserve and you are not allowed to fence off any land where you might grow veggies, chicken and sheep or goats.

After leaving Dana, promising to return (and I have no doubt we will, but maybe not in winter), we headed for Kerak, a huge Crusader castle. It's enormous. There are seven levels, and all kinds of chambers and corridors. Plus a decent museum. Yet another mind-blowing place to explore in Jordan.


The entire town is within the old castle walls, and the castle itself is on top of a seriously tall hill. When we arrived we were well ready for lunch. We found a restaurant that had the elusive mansaf on the menu. We all ordered it. We were bemused when it arrived. Our plates contained a dome of rice with three lumps of evil-smelling mutton with bones sticking out of it. And then they brought each of us a bowl of white slurry. It all smelled rancid, and the meat seemed to have gone off at least a week ago. We could not begin to eat it. This was deeply embarrassing because we just didn't know if this was how it should be, or whether the owner was just taking the piss. He was deeply hurt by our rejection until I paid for it.

Later, in Madaba, we told this story to Joseph Sawhalla. First question 'how much did you pay for it?' I said '3 or 4 JDs'. 'Aah' he says, 'you must pay at least 10 JDs to get the real thing'. He explained that what we had been given was nothing like the real thing, that it should only be made with the very best bits of prime lamb, that we had been quite right to reject what had been offered, and that we should persevere in the quest for proper mansaf, because it is truly one of the world's great dishes.

The last leg of the drive should have been easy. From Kerak to Madaba we were told would take an hour and a half. Oh no it didn't. Thanks to Jordan's lousy road signs we ended up driving east when we should have been driving north. We only realised this when we hit the Desert Highway. We headed north on the highway, hoping to find a road that would connect us back to the Kings Highway. We were in serious dusk by this time and these unlit little roads were very hard work at night, mostly because of other drivers who used full beam all the time. Yekk.

We arrived at the Mariam Hotel in Madaba at about 6.30. We checked in, dumped our stuff and headed into town. We had met a few people from the Madaba Inn Hotel, and I thought it would be nice to have a slap-up dinner there on our last night.

The problem was, they were not fully open yet. It's a brand-new hotel and was in a kind of soft-opening phase. But they said the restaurant was open, so up we went. Hussam the waiter explained that the menus had not been printed yet. After a week in Jordan we had learned not to trust menus anyway, so we asked him what there was and he went into the kitchen to ask the chef what there was. We ordered steak and medallions d'beouf and a bottle of Mount Nebo Rouge. They had nothing that Offspring wanted to drink but said it was ok if he went to the liqour store around the corner. The food was excellent, and they gave us complimentary chocolate eclairs. I refused to eat one of mine because it looked like Dougal from The Magic Roundabout. Offspring photographed it and we discussed the possibilities of auctioning it on EBay. (Nil - BetterArf snaffled it).

Hussam was extremely cool. He explained that he had no experience as a waiter, and we had several chats about the existential angst of being a Jordanian in the modern world.

Back to the Mariam Hotel for a little sleep before going to the airport in a couple of hours' time. I had no plans to drive - I'd done that road after dark before and I didn't care to do it again. So we had Charl arrange transport - which turned out to be a clapped-out minivan with no seat belts. It got us there on a secret back road. We dumped Offspring at the airport and returned to the hotel.

FINAL DAY

Our flight back to Dubai was at 7.30 in the evening. So we had one day to kill and we planned to go to Ma'in Hot Springs, about 30km from Madaba.

When we got there we discovered that we could not afford the 10 JD each entrance fee. Actually we could if we really wanted to do, but that would involve changing more money. We turned round and headed for the Dead Sea. This road down to the Dead Sea seemed to be a new one. It was partly blocked by oil drums, but people ahead of us were going through. However, at the end of this spectacular descent into the valley, the exit onto the Amman/Aqaba/Dead Sea road was completely blocked. There was a stationary car in front of us, and we were approached by an insane bedu who yelled at us in Arabic. I had no clue what he wanted. None at all. He thumped the car (mind my CDW!), he yelled a lot, he jumped up and down. Eventually he went back to the first car, moved some oil drums and let them through. He then indicated that we could go through also. I didn't want to. As I started to do a u-turn, this pillock grabbed hold of my window sill, urging us not to go back. I'm afraid I might have been unpleasant to him at this point. He let go, I drove on.

Halfway up the mountain there is a viewing platform. I was not keen to use it, I just wanted to get the hell away from this place. But we stopped. BetterArf went a-wandering, while I tried to chase Dead Sea flies out of the car. As I sat there, a car full of Men In Black drove slowly past on the wrong side of the road. I was seriously spooked. I felt that for whatever reason, we were objects of hatred in a very remote place, and we could well be up for kidnapping. I went to get BetterArf. We left.

We headed back to Madaba, and went to see Joseph Sawhalla again. We had the chat about mansaf, and then he said we might as well extend our stay in Jordan because Dubai will be closed. We are puzzled and he explained about the demise of Sheikh Maktoum. We were shocked. We had heard the news about Ariel Sharon, but completely missed this story.

It was time for us to head off to the airport. After a long queue at the entrance the soldier asked 'Where are you going?'.
'The airport?'
'OK'.

We parked where the car had originally been delivered to us. I couldn't see Ayman from Monte Carlo Car Rental, so I called him on his mobile. I asked him where he was and he said 'at home in Amman'. (It is Friday, the first day of the weekend). He told me that someone would be there within an hour, but if I'm in a hurry I could put the key under the seat and lock the doors. We were just starting on a long debate about how this might realistically be done, when someone tapped on the window. It was a guy from Monte Carlo. He checked around the car, and was... Surprised? Amazed? Astonished? ... To find no dings on the car. Well, me too. 1,553 kilometers without a prang in a country full of very charismatic drivers. Yayy Keefieboy!

CONCLUSIONS

Aaah, if you have never been to Jordan, go now! Take my car! Despite the prats who want to rip you off, and the risk that Westerners might be terrorist targets, go now! The landscape is stunning. The history is amazing. But more than any of that, the people of Jordan are truly wonderful. They all say 'welcome to my country', but you know what? They really mean it.

I loved the fact that it is a half-Christian / half-Muslim country, and everyone gets on just fine. I loved the fact that there are liquor stores around the place - you don't need a licence to buy the stuff, and muslims seem to be quite disciplined enough to just ignore it. I was intrigued by being in Old Testament Land, and only a stone's-throw away from Israel and Palestine. Coming from the Gulf, I was also intrigued to find that this 'non-existent entity', that you are not allowed to mark on a map, very clearly does exist. I know it does, I've seen it across the Dead Sea, and next door to Aqaba.

I have to say, this has been the best holiday we have ever had. It was nothing like sitting on a Spanish beach for a fortnight, we could do something like that at home if we wanted to. We explored the country in the middle of winter. We saw life as it really is for lots of people. We met people whose lives are steeped in civilisation and history, and they have become our friends.

We were lovin' it.

Jordan Jollies - Day Seven

Aqaba was totally cloudy when we woke up. We didn't fancy breakfast at the hotel, and weren't even sure it was provided, so we wandered around the town and found a little restaurant. For such a well-known place (thank you Lawrence), Aqaba is tiny. We took a drive to the South Coast where the beaches are - but they were all windy and deserted. We had a spot of rain on the way. The day is looking like a bit of a washout - it's too cold and windy for the beach or Wadi Rum, lots of sand in the air, and we don't really know what to do.

One thing on our list was to buy Offspring a new shisha - his old one is allegedly held together with sticky tape and silver foil. BetterArf and I had looked at some the previous evening and noticed some very small cute ones in armoured travelling cases, but really we don't know anything about what makes a good shisha, so fortunately we didn't buy one. Offspring know exactly what to look for - the bigger the better seems to be the mantra. He chose a monster - at least a metre high, and of course the most expensive. But even at 19 JDs it was a fraction of what he'd have to pay in London.

We had been thinking about a trip in a glass-bottomed boat, but the operators try to rip us off. The official government price list has been doctored, so the one-hour trip that was supposed to cost 15 JD now reads 25. One guy offered us 20, but I was pissed off with being robbed and we left. As we did so a guy was calling 'one-hour, 15', but it was too late, they'd blown it with this particular tourist.

A new plan was hatched. Go to Wadi Mousa (the town next to Petra) and splurge on a hotel with stars to its name, a full-sized bath and stupidly hot water. We got to Wadi Mousa about 3pm and checked into the Petra Palace Hotel. We got a huge room with a fabulous bathroom and lots and lots of fluffy white towels. It was 60JD for the night, but we reckoned we'd earned a bit of luxury.

BetterArf went off for a good old pummelling at a nearby Turkish Bath while Offspring and I headed for the bar downstairs. It advertised Kilkenny and Guinness, but of course they didn't have any. I settled for Petra Beer (8% alc), 'The Taste of the Rosy City'. We had a little chat with the barman who told us he had lived in Sharjah for a year but found it 'too fake'. While we were in the bar, the heavens opened and we witnessed a terrific downpour.

In the evening the restaurant offered a buffet dinner. I was starting to panic because there was no mansaf to be seen. I asked the maitre d' about it and he raised an eyebrow as if to say 'you won't like it', but did offer to send out to a local restaurant for some. I didn't bother, but in retrospect I probably should have taken up the offer.

Tension builds - will Keefieboy get to try mansaf before leaving Jordan?

Jordan Jollies - Day Six

We left Dana after breakfast and they only charged us 60JDs for the two nights and dinners. Although we had tickets for Petra we really didn't feel like doing it again. We wanted to get down to Aqaba and get warm.

We stopped at Shawbak Castle which is not too far from Dana, and then headed across country towards the Desert Highway. Our route was about 200km and I discovered that the car could not go faster than 155 kph, and that Jordan does not seem to have any speed cameras. Most of the trip was on the Desert Highway, and a bit boring. But the last 50 km or so were through beautiful pinky/red mountains. On the outskirts of Aqaba there is a serious checkpoint because the whole of Aqaba is an economic free zone.

In Aqaba itself we rejected the first hotel we saw, and booked into The International Hotel. It was pretty basic, but our 'triple room' was a suite of two bedrooms with a little lounge. Can't complain for 20 JDs a night.

BetterArf wanted a sleep, while Offspring and I planned on spending the afternoon in The Rovers Return. This plan was thwarted by their complete failure to supply Kilkenny or Guinness, despite them having the fonts. Had one pint of Amstel (yawn) and went shopping.

I'd been trying to get an adapter so my three-pin Brit-style phone charger could plug into the Jordanian two-pin power sockets. I finally managed to get one but back at the hotel was amused to find that the sockets were three-pin jobbies.

We were heading back to the hotel and bumped into BetterArf on the way - she was going out and we were going in. We re-arranged our rendezvous (it had originally been T'Rovers Return) and she gives me the lowdown on the shower and hot water situation.

A bit later I met up with BetterArf. Offspring had put himself to bed (it was 6 pm). As we walk she told me about Salim, the bookshop owner who had sold her a million JDs worth of books. He wanted to talk to me about doing business in Dubai. Then we bumped into him. He was on his way to pray, but took us to a very good fish restaurant and chose a couple of fish for us. We promised to stop by his shop in the morning.

Anyhoo, the food was excellent, and we went for a little walk around Aqaba Corniche. We found out where the beaches and aquatic activities were, and it looks like we'll be basking in sunshine tomorrow.

Jordan Jollies - Day Five

This will be our first Petra day. Because we loved the Dana Hotel so much, we had decided that we would return there in the evening. Petra is maybe a 45-minute, easy drive from Dana. In daylight we are able to see Dana properly, and it really is a fabulous little place.

Petra itself was virtually unknown to the world until it was made world-famous by the shooting there of parts of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989. It had actually been unknown to all but a few local residents until Johan Ludwig Burckhardt rediscovered it in 1812.

The entrance to the Petra site is actually in the town of Wadi Mousa. The site itself is meant to be free of any tourist tat - the tat, the hotels and restaurants are in the town. Fortunately there is also a digital photo shop, so BetterArf was able to get the photos off her camera chip onto a CD (miracles of modern technology).



You buy your tickets for Petra at the visitor's centre. I bought 2-day passes, 25 JD each for the grownups and 13 JD for Offspring with his magic student card. From the visitor's centre it's a couple of kilometers to the entrance to the Siq. The Siq is a narrow canyon, possibly one kilometer long, that leads into Petra itself.

There are dozens of people offering the use of horses, mules and pony-and-traps to get down to the Siq. We opted for horses at 2JDs a head, and then continued down the Siq on foot. The Siq was just amazing. Bizarre rock formations, different coloured rock strata, impossible structures. Probably worth the entrance fee just to see this. But at the end of it, at right angles to the Siq and directly facing you, is The Treasury. A complete building facade carved out of the red rock of the mountainside. At this point we were assaulted by assorted bedu kids who all wanted us to buy things (it was only later that we found that these bedu actually live inside Petra).
We mooched around for a bit, and then one of our party (certainly not me) decided it would be a laugh to climb the 800 steps to the The High Place of Sacrifice. I don't know exactly how high this is, but I was certainly glad to find an old geezer selling water when I got to the top. It was possible to get on a donkey to take you up there, but I felt that that would be cheating. The High Place of Sacrifice, by the way, is a bit of a temple where they used to, you know, sacrifice things.

The walk down is obviously much easier than the stagger up, and we amused ourselves by telling folks on the way up that there was nothing at the top or that it was closed.




We mooched around the valley some more, and explored the Amphitheatre. Offspring was walking along what would have been the front of the stage when a five-year-old kid started trying to climb up behind him. Being a kind-hearted soul, Offspring pulled the kid up, at which point he tried to sell Offspring some postcards. I was sitting a few rows up in the amphitheatre when the kid spotted me. He ran over, climbed the tiers with ease, and thrust his postcards at me. I declined to buy, at which point he adopted the time-honoured sales technique of beating me around the shins with the product. It didn't work. And honestly, I have never seen so much snot on a child in my life!



After four or five hours in Petra we were getting hungry. There was no food to be had inside the site, so we left. We were somewhat tired by this time, so when we finally staggered out of the Siq, we were definitely up for horses. Unfortunately I got a bit of a scoundrel, who wanted to torture his horse and me by making it gallop. Actually it was fun, but the horse's owner demanded more money because the horse was tired now and probably could not work for the rest of the day (yeah right). Whatever, I pay him.

Back on Wadi Mousa's main street we settled outside the SandStone Restaurant. I tried to order Mansaf, but the owner said they only did that on alternate days. Today was Maklouba day so I had a mixed grill instead. BetterArf had the maklouba and enjoyed it. I had a few beers (Philadelphia, one of the local brews) and Offspring had shisha (double-apple, of course).



We left Wadi Mousa at about 4pm, but got hideously lost after Qadisseyah and end up driving 100km trying to find the Dana Hotel! We finally got there at about 6.30. The weather in Petra had been pleasantly warm, but in Dana it was cold and blowing a gale.

One thing we had been warned about by our Jordanian friends: Jordanians are without exception 100% hopeless when it comes to putting up signs for things. In the case of Dana Village there are six signs close by (three on each side of the main road), and they are spaced maybe 100 meters apart. Unfortunately, they all direct you to the unpaved road into the quarry 4 kms away. So that's, like, a bit wrong. There is one other sign that is actually correct, but you can only see it if you are coming from the north. If you approach from the south, well, yes, you can see the sign, but only the backside of it that has no words on it. So that's how you find Dana Village.

Apart from that, I'm lovin' it! Jordan is just one of the most remarkable places I've ever been to, the people are lovely, really hospitable (plus you actually get to meet them 'cos they work in shops, hotels, drive taxis etc), the landscape and history are incredible.

Jordan Jollies - Day Four

Our plan for today was a bit vague - basically head south and see where we got to. We got seriously lost leaving Amman - driving as far east as Zarqa before eventually hitting the Ring Road that brought us onto the Kings Highway. After passing through Madaba we went to Mount Nebo, and hired a guide. Nebo is where Moses popped his clogs. The church here has some incredible mosaics, and there's a sensational view across the Jordan Valley. You can see Jericho and other cities in the West Bank /Israel.

We drove down and down and down to the Dead Sea. When you get onto the Dead Sea road you get to meet soldiers at Army checkpoints (there's three or four along the length of the Dead Sea coast). There's a couple of big hotel/resorts at the north end which we ignored. Then there's a couple of smaller places. We stopped at one, hoping to get some lunch, but they wanted us to pay the full day's admission as well, so we skipped it.

We stopped at the entrance to Wadi Mujib Nature Reserve and wandered over to the Dead Sea. None of us fancied going in. For some reason the Dead Sea is the fly centre of the universe. They are everywhere and they just love to lie down on people, cars, and better still, inside cars.

We go back to the Nature Reserve. If you pay a little entrance fee, that entitles you to go stand on a bridge overlooking the place where the wadi meets the sea. There is water in it, so unless you fancy a bit of rock-climbing and wading there's not much you can do. In fact there's so much water that you cannot get off the viewing 'platform' (rocks) without getting wet. Offspring of course is in there like a shot. When he comes out his trousers are soaked. Kids.

Continue on to As-Safi, the site of Lot's Cave. Found the Visitor's Centre they're building, but couldn't find the cave. It's about 4pm, we've had no lunch, we do not have a hotel booked for that night, and it will be dark in a couple of hours. We decide to head inland for Tafila. This involves driving up a stunning road through the mountains. Actually, stunning just isn't the word, it's mind-blowing. We pass a few inhabited caves. We stop about halfway up the road and discover a deep ravine only a dozen metres from the road but completely hidden from it. Inside the ravine there is lush greenery and some small dwellings.

Driving onwards and upwards, we arrive at Tafila. It's a one-street dump of a town. We find a rest-house (this normally means a pension-type place), but while they can offer us food, 'food with sleep' is not available. They send us to Dana Nature Reserve, half an hour away. This has a hotel, and we call ahead and book rooms. We follow the signs and end up lost in an unlit, unpaved quarry for at least half an hour. A truck driver gives us proper directions.

The hotel is well worth the struggle to find it. Dana (Varna?) is an ancient village of small stone dwellings. Many are being restored. They seem a bit surprised when we arrive (we found out later that we had phoned the Dana Guest House, which is a completely different place - they're probably still wondering about that party of three mad Brits who made a booking but never showed up). The hotel is run by a co-op called the 'Sons of Dana and Qudassiyah' and comprises 9 rooms around a courtyard. The dining room is a steel-framed tent on the roof. Suleiman tells us that dinner will be ready in half an hour, meanwhile, go up and have some tea. My pleas for beer go unanswered.

The tea has sage rather than mint in it. Very nice. The dinner was wonderful, as was the breakfast in the morning. There's no menu, you just eat what Mariam has cooked, and boy, can she cook.

There's another hotel in the village 'The Tower' and we could hear drumming. We went over to investigate and it was a little band - an oud player and a couple of guys with drums. No beer at this place either, but we did have a little something that we'd bought for emergencies in Amman.

Wonderful day, early night.

Jordan Jollies - Day Three

Well, it's New Year's Eve and we have to find somewhere where we can celebrate. It looks like Amman is the best bet. We tootle down from Jerash, and find ourselves hideously lost in the crawling morning traffic. I was impressed by the countdown timers at the traffic lights - they told you how long the light would stay red or green. We were looking for the Caravan Hotel which I'd seen mentioned on a website.

We found it eventually, it's near the Big Mosque and the Coptic Church. It's a quaint thirties building and the heating has broken down. But it was only 22 JDs for the night so we took it.

We walked around Amman a bit, and stopped to use an Internet Cafe. We had asked the hotel guys where the New Year's party action would be and they recommended The Big Fellow, an Irish Pub at Abdoun Circle. We took a taxi there, because our driver (c'est moi) was refusing to drive in the city.

Abdoun Circle seems to be the pub soukh, but they are all closed (it is noon). A few hours later they are still closed, but we find out that The Big Fellow would be opening at six, and that tickets for the New Year bash were 48 JDs. No thank you. Offspring and I are quite 'thirsty' by this time (BetterArf has gone shopping). We find a liquor shop with people drinking outside. The owner says we can have a can of beer if we're quick. We decline and he directs us to The Blue Fig. This is a ten-minute walk down and up a hill and is a quasi-Irish arty-farty cafe bar in a modern building. Service is extremely slow and when it comes they don't have the first three things we order: Kilkenny, Jim Beam, lemonade. Welcome.

After lunch we take a cab to meet BetterArf downtown. The Palestinian driver holds me personally responsible for everything from the creation of Israel to the invasion of Iraq. We meet up with BetterArf outside the Roman Amphitheatre. She was ripped off by a taxi driver - she paid 17 JDs for a fare that should have been 1.7. Then I almost got ripped off at a stinky public loo. The guy asked for 100 fils, and showed me a 500 fils coin so I'd know what it looks like. Then he pointed at a sign in Arabic that he says details the charges. I can see it does not - I know what the numbers look like. Another customer comes in and pays 10 fils. I do the same. 'Bare-faced cheek' is probably the right phrase to describe what this guy was doing.

One thing that I absolutely cannot stand is being overcharged for stuff. Yes, I know that these are poor people and that paying ten times over the odds is not going to bankrupt me. But that's not the point. If I am happy with a service, I will give a tip, if I'm not, I won't. But if you had seen, and smelt, the state of that toilet, you too would have been disgusted.

Anyhoo, we take a cab back to the hotel and tell them that the Irish Pub was a washout, so they suggest a place, not too far away, called Canvas. It's a gallery/restaurant in a little park, and it looks very nice. We go through the security x-ray, get frisked a bit, and then the manager explains what we would get for our 60 JDs entrance fee. We leave.

We headed back to the shopping area we had been in earlier and tried a few likely looking places at random. They all had extortionate cover charges. In the end we opted for a party at the Amman Kempinski (25 JDs including a free drink, band and DJ). We were reassured to note the high security all around, and the Kempinski x-raying, frisking and taking ID details of everyone going in. The bash was nicely un-English - no 'Auld Lang Syne'(God I hate that song).

The walk home was fab - streets were jammed with revellers, none of them drunk. Cops we passed wished us a HNY. And we were pleased to find the unheated hotel room was plenty warm enough.