Getting around

I've been enjoying walking around and exploring our neighbourhood, even with the lack of footpaths and the traffic and the dusty air. But it turns out not all of Amman is within walking distance of home (odd, in a city of 4 million), even by my New-Zealander-on-holiday definition of walking distance.

On Friday we decided to visit the Citadel, a fortified hilltop site first occupied in the Neolithic period and featuring ruins from Bronze Age through to about the 7th Century. Basically it's the place for tourists to go in Amman. But how to get there? It's 8 km from home, so a bit out of reach for a walk followed by sightseeing and then getting home again. Rich and middle class locals drive (or have their drivers drive them), or take taxis. Poor people take buses. I would happily take buses, except that I have no idea where any of them go; there doesn't seem to be an official route map, and for some weird reason the destination labels on the front of the buses are all in Arabic. Also, the buses look sufficiently crowded that I would feel guilty about taking space that someone who actually needs to be somewhere might use.

(Friday mornings are the best time to be out and about because the roads are quiet until lunchtime while most people are at home getting ready for Friday prayers. Mark's teaching week runs Sunday to Thursday, and yes, it is taking a bit of getting used to.)

Boldly going where millions of earlier adopters have been before us, we summoned an Uber. Within minutes our driver had pulled up outside our front door and we were off, secure in the knowledge that he actually knew where we wanted to go, which might not have been the case if we'd had to talk to a taxi driver. And best of all, in a city where taxi drivers have a reputation for trying to fleece tourists, we knew the price in advance. In some countries Uber is cheaper than taxis; here it costs a bit more but being able to pinpoint your destination on the map and know the price makes it all worthwhile.

 Some photos from around the Citadel and our walk down into town as an interlude:

(Yeah, I should probably start putting captions on my photos.)

Now, back to transport. Having dipped our toes in the Uber pool, we followed up by Ubering home from town, and then, a day later, braved an actual taxi, since there was a whole line of them outside the shopping mall and we would have had to wait for an Uber. Mark sat in the front and kept an eagle eye on the meter, but somewhat disappointingly the driver made no attempt at all to overcharge us. (As a woman, I'm expected to sit in the back - darn.)

All the private schools, and there are plenty of them, have school buses for their staff and students. Every day Mark gets picked up at 6.30 by his school bus, which takes about 40 minutes to wind its way to the school just outside Amman. This morning I went with him, as we were meant to be taken to the police station for fingerprinting. It was foggy (I am baffled as to how such a dry city can turn on such thick fogs in the morning), so I saw nothing of the scenery. In fact, I have new respect for those movie heroes who can tell where the vehicle they're in is going even when they're beaten up and blindfolded: I was looking out the window and I had no idea at all.

The fingerprinting didn't happen, but that's a story for another day. I still had to make my way home from school, and there were no Ubers to be had out there. Luckily there's an alternative: a Middle Eastern outfit called Careem that works in a similar way but also offers the chance of cheaper rides if you agree to ride-share with other passengers going your way.

Nothing so far has made me want to drive in Amman. It's not super scary being a passenger, and I've seen fewer nose-to-tails here so far than in a week walking home from the university, but driving just looks exhausting. We might yet hire a car to head out of town for a weekend ... or we might see how far Uber will take us.