Okay, now the real trip begins!

After brief stops in Paris and Madrid yesterday, I was back up in the air again today.

Destination: Jordan.

A restless sleep

I was in a 6 person dorm last night and two of them were snorers.

No worries, right?   I mean, I have those amazing silicone earplugs.   I’ll sleep right through it, right?

Right?

Well, turns out I found the loudest snorer in the world because, even with the earplugs in, I was awoken a couple hours into my sleep by him.

So, what do you do when earplugs don’t work?

Well, you put in the earbuds instead and play a soothing 10 hour Youtube video of a rain storm to drown out the noise.

I kind of fell asleep but also woke up a handful of times during the night so it was a pretty fragmented sleep to say the least.

I had a tentative plan to go explore around Madrid for a couple of hours this morning but I had nothing written in stone and, honestly, I just wanted to stay in bed and work up yesterday’s blog.

So, that’s what I did.

Finally, at noon, I packed up all my stuff and was heading back to the airport.

What?   You went to Madrid and all you did was eat tapas?   You didn’t explore the city at all?

Well, before you get all crazy, you should know that I’ve visited Madrid before and had a great time exploring the city.

Back to the airport

As I headed out of the hostel I had, yet again, managed to dodge the rain which has been off and on in the city the last couple of days.

It was a grey, overcast 9c out there.   Not cold enough for my winter jacket but not warm enough for a tshirt.

Heading to the airport was a game of ever changing temperatures.

As soon as I entered the underground Metro I was quickly disrobing.   Off came my jacket and eventually it was followed up by taking off my long sleeve shirt.

Yeah, it was warm down there.

And then, once at the airport, the jacket went back on.

And then off.

And then back on once on the plane.

Yeah, my travels to the plane today literally took me through 4 different climate zones.

Burger King

Oh, first of all, don’t judge me.

I had plenty of Spanish tapas last night!

Today, I just wanted to grab something at the airport and that something was Burger King.

More specifically, a Whopper on a – wait for it – gluten free bun!

Spain is one of only a handful of countries in the world where you can get a gluten free bun at both Burger King and McDonalds and, dammit, I was going to take advantage of it.

I also had an ulterior motive for visiting BK as I needed to snag something for a very late night dinner for when I’d arrive in Jordan later.

I wouldn’t be arriving there until just after midnight and I just wasn’t sure what would be available to me there that late at night.

So, I packed up a couple of burgers to go with me all the way to Jordan.

Yeah, my first meal in Jordan is going to be a burger from Burger King.

That may be the only time in history that sentence has been uttered.

Hey, I’m nothing if not original…

Flying to Jordan

My flight to Jordan was leaving at 3pm and in my email it said to be at the gate by 2pm.

I finished off my Burger King and arrived at the gate at just after 2:00.

There were only a dozen or so people sitting around the gate and, for a brief moment, I thought maybe the flight had boarded already.

A slight sense of panic came over me.

Was I late for the flight?

Nope.

Just turned out there weren’t that many people on this flight.

Well, more specifically, this first segment of the flight.

You see, this flight to Jordan was making a brief pitstop in Barcelona to pick up more people, refuel, and head to it’s final destination.

Well, at least there’d be no issue getting my bag into an overhead compartment today.

Soon we were in the air for our 90 minute flight to Barcelona and just as quick as the seatbelt light came off, we were soon descending into Barcelona.

Some people disembarked there and, for those of us continuing on, we just remained in our seats.

Eventually the plane loaded up and, sadly, the empty seats next to me were soon filled up.

And, at 5:30, we were on our way.

With a two hour time change, we were scheduled to arrive in Amman at just after midnight but we actually ended up arriving almost a full hour early.

Welcome to Jordan!

After going through the visa on arrival process and security control, I was officially in Jordan.

I stopped at an ATM to get those precious, oh so precious Jordanian dinars which, by the way, I had to pay a hefty fee of 15JOD ($30) to withdraw.

I withdrew $500 worth and I’m hoping that’s more than enough for this country and I don’t have to make another trip to the ATM.

To get to downtown Amman, there’s no transit that will take you so you’re pretty much at the mercy of the taxis.

Luckily I had read that they have set rates to different areas of Jordan and all you had to do was go to the taxi stand outside the exit and they’d do payment for you there and wrangle up a driver.

I don’t know if it was just because it was late at night, but that anticipated mad rush of drivers hassling me for a taxi never materialized.

I pretty much just exited the airport and walked straight to the taxi stand unencumbered.

Anyway, the going rate into downtown Amman was 22.50JOD which works out to a whopping $45 but, like I said, you’re pretty much at their mercy.

My driver didn’t really speak English and I certainly don’t know Arabic so he setup conversation mode for Google Translate on his phone so we could do the usual taxi small talk.

I had smartly created QR codes for my hostel locations on Google Maps so I had him take a photo of my code and it instantly showed him where to go.

Damn, I’m so smart I tell ya!

The ride took about 45 minutes and it went off without a hitch.

By 12:30 I was all checked in.   I was told there was no one else in the room right now but to expect a couple of people around 4am.

Hot damn!   And here I was legitimately worried about arrive after midnight for fear of intruding on my fellow sleeping dorm mates.

Well, guess I better get those ear plugs in.

Oh, and by the way, those burgers I transported from the Burger King in Madrid cross continent were horrible.   Yeah, don’t do that.   Cold burgers at 1am ain’t good.

Anyway, see ya tomorrow…