4 Day Classic Tour

Amman – Al Balad - Jebel Al Qala'a – Madaba – Greek Orthodox Church of St. George – Petra - Siq Al Barid (Little Petra) – Al Beidha – Wadi Rum

Day 1

Queen Alia International Airport  or Borders – Amman – Al Balad - Jebel Al Qala'a

Welcome to Jordan!

We will meet and assist you upon your arrival at Queen Alia International airport or the borders and then transfer you to your hotel in Amman.

You will visit the archaeological museum which boasts an excellent collection of antiquities ranging from prehistoric times to the 15th century, including an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls and four Iron Age anthromorphic coffins at Jebel Al Qala'a.

We will then drive you to Al Balad, or Downtown, the oldest area in Amman. Al Balad is the traditional part of Amman where small businesses sell everything from fabulous jewelry to household items and is a great place to browse the shops and pick up a bargain.

We will return to our hotel in Amman in time for dinner and overnight.

Day 2

Amman – Madaba – Greek Orthodox Church of St. George

Today we drive along the King’s Highway, to visit Madaba, 'The City of Mosaics'.  Madaba is a Christian City and within its churches are some quite superb mosaics, the most famous of which is a 6th century mosaic map depicting the Holy Land housed in the contemporary Greek Orthodox Church of St. George.

It is fun to spend a while picking out the various cities and locations, admiring the little vignettes the artist incorporated into this incredible map.

Other mosaic masterpieces found in the Church of the Virgin and the Apostles and the Archaeological Museum, depict a rampant profusion of flowers and plants, birds and fish, animals and exotic beasts, as well as scenes from mythology and everyday pursuits of hunting, fishing, and farming.
 

We will drive to our hotel in Madaba for dinner and overnight.

Day 3

Madaba - Petra

We will drive to Petra to visit the famous ancient city. 

Petra is the treasure of the ancient world and definitely a highlight of any trip to Jordan.

It is hidden behind and almost impenetrable barrier of rugged mountains and boasts incomparable scenes making it perhaps the most majestic and imposing ancient site still standing today.

It is the legacy of the Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people who settled in southern Jordan more than 2,000 years ago and carved their new capital out of the rose-red Sharah Mountains.

The site contains refined culture, massive architecture and an ingenious complex of dams and water channels.

For your first part of the tour in Petra you will have an English speaking guide who will show you round the numerous highlights including the Treasury (El Khazneh) which has an intricately carved façade that glows in the dazzling sun, the amphitheatre, and the Royal Tombs.

For the remainder of the day you will be able to wander at your leisure; one monument leading to the next, kilometer after kilometer.

The sheer size of the city and quality of the beautifully carved facades is staggering, almost overwhelming, and there are over 800 individual monuments in total, including buildings, tombs, baths, funerary halls, temples, gateways, and colonnaded streets to admire, mostly carved from the kaleidoscopic sandstone by the technical and artistic genius of its inhabitants.

At the end of the day you will walk back past gift shops where you can buy a souvenir or gift to accompany your treasured memories. We will drive to a hotel in Petra for our dinner and overnight stay.

Day 4

Petra - Siq Al Barid (Little Petra) – Al Beidha – Wadi Rum – Queen Alia International Airport

After having breakfast at our hotel we drive to Siq Al Barid (Little Petra) , a suburb of the main ancient city, and stop at the area known as Al Beidha (the white one) on account of the color of its rock. Remains of a Neolithic site have been here in the area, dating back to 7,500 BC.

This makes it one of the earliest known co-operative villages on earth. Mediterranean trees such as Oak, Juniper, Carob, and Pistachio thrive in this small sandy valley.

We progress to Wadi Rum for a Jeep Safari amongst its enchanting pink and white desert sands.

Travel in Wadi Rum is a journey to another world, where one can escape the worries of everyday life and return to nature and the simple life.

In this immense space, man is dwarfed into insignificance.

Vast, silent and timeless, Wadi Rum possesses one of the most beautiful desertscapes in the world. Rock carvings mark the passage of ancient tribes in pre-history.

Thamudic inscriptions, burial mounds, ancient megaliths and ruined buildings abound and Nabataean rock carved stairways, dams and temples can still be found throughout the area.

Wadi Rum is perhaps best known because of its connection with Lawrence of Arabia and we follow in the enigmatic British officer's footsteps as we drive through the surreal moonscape.

Then from Wadi Rum we will drive you to the airport or the borders in plenty of time for your trip home if time will not permit us to visit Aqaba, but we leave this to after finishing in Wadi Rum and if we have time we will visit Aqaba, if not we will drive directly for departure.