Our trip to Jordan was booked on something of a whim. One day we sat down over wines and talked about places we’d like to visit soon. Our friend Georgia made a short list and Jordan was one of the places on said list.
The following week, we just couldn’t shake the thought of Jordan off so we playfully looked at flight, found some pretty decently priced ones going to Aqaba and booked it straight away!
A few weeks later, we arrived into sunny Aqaba, already impressed on our arrival by the stunning and intricate landscape of the mountains surrounding Aqaba.
Aqaba is a destination in itself for holidaymakers but we didn’t really know this at the time and our sights were set on somewhere else entirely – the lost city of Petra – one of the new wonders of the world.
With that, we caught our pre-booked taxi from Aqaba airport over to our hotel in Petra (*we pre-booked this with our hotel as we didn’t really know what to expect and just thought it would be easier to do it this way).
The first night was relatively uneventful, we arrived after dark and pretty much just went for dinner and decided to call it a night early. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the combination of going to bed early and a small bit of jetlag meant that by 5.30am, we were all awake (3 of us – Lloyd, myself and our friend Georgia) and ready to go explore Petra.
Petra opens its gates at 6am and we were amongst the first to get there. You can buy your tickets here (no need to pre-book or anything) and if you’re here for more than one day, it makes sense to buy a multiple day-pass – which we did. (I did we got one for 3 days which ended up allowing you access for 4 days or something like that – we didn’t think we’d need the 4th day bit but it was such a small amount extra it just made sense to get it).
And so off we went, looking for that iconic site of Petra – the Treasury.
As soon as you arrive in Petra though, you already start to see rather impressive buildings, a clue to something we found out even more about over the coming days – there’s so much more impressive stuff to see in Petra than you’d think. The Treasury and the Monastery might be the most famous but there are some other pretty big hitters here too.
To get to the Treasury, you walk through the Siq, a valley/gorge that carves its way through the mountains to take you right to the Treasury.
The whole walk from the entrance to the actual Treasury can take anywhere between 20 – 30 minutes to walk and my advice would be to actually slow down and enjoy this walk. It’s impressive and absolutely worth soaking up.
The best part though is that when you actually then get to the Treasury, it kinda sneaks up on you that way. You get used to just seeing this long path winding through the mountains that when it finally opens up to the Treasury, it’s just the stuff of dreams.
Finally getting to see the Treasury was just absolutely incredible. I am aware that all of this sounds super gushy and ‘a bit much’ but it’s just so true.
It’s just one of those places that you see in photos, books, on TV for so long that it almost seems like it’s not even a real place anymore. How could something so grand (and somewhat mysterious) be real but it is and boy is it worth visiting.
I’m not usually one for hype so I usually take these things with a pinch of salt but this is one place that lives up to the expectation.
After taking a few moments to soak that sight all up, my camera decided it wanted in on the action and the shutter button went at a hundred clicks a second – taking photos from every single angle possible (at least it felt like that at the time – looking back, it was mostly from just the front
