Our trip to Jordan took place at the end of October/ beginning of November. We spent 11 days there and we believe that it was enough time to discover the most important places in the country and relax for a few days by the sea. I have already written about the rules for entering Jordan and how we were travelling around here.

Our itinerary looked like this:
Day 1 Amman
Day 2 Jerash
Day 3 Dead Sea
Day 4 Travelling south and Little Petra
Day 5 Petra
Day 6 Wadi Rum
Day 7-9 Aqaba
Day 10 Travelling to Madaba by Road 65 (along the border with Israel and Dead Sea)
Day 11 Madaba

What did we like the most?
If we were to answer as a family, the best day was probably visiting Wadi Rum. A jeep ride, climbing rocks and great dunes, lunch in the middle of the desert and spending the night in a tent. Adventure for everyone!
Petra, of course, made a very big impression on us, but for the children walking in the heat all day long was not the best entertainment. However, we all have fond memories of Little Petra, which we visited the day before Petra proper. Probably, if we visited them in the reverse order, the impressions would be different. We were also very positively surprised by the city of Jerash, or actually the ruins of an ancient city, because contemporary Jerash itself is rather not interesting. The citadel in Amman is not even comparable to Jerash, so if you have little time, we recommend to skip the capital 🙂
Madaba was among Gabriela’s favorite places, not only because of the trampoline park, where we ended our stay in Jordan. Both children really liked the mosaics and the opportunity to try to make their own. Of course, the churches with mosaics were more boring, but the first impressions of the Archaeological Park were very positive.
The children were happiest at the Dead Sea, because there we spent our time at the resort with a water slide, where Gabriela and Adam had fun all day. The subsequent three-day stay in Aqaba couldn’t beat it as unfortunately the slides were closed.
One place that I have not written about before, but we liked it very much, is road 65 leading from Aqaba to Amman, along the border with Israel. Route 15, which we drove from Amman to Petra, is just ugly and here we could see a considerable variety of landscape. Mountains, sandy desert, banana plantations, palm trees, camels on the road and the moon-like saline coast of the Dead Sea. It is unfortunate that we got there after sunset, but we managed to get a quick glimpse of this magical landscape anyway.

Was it worth going to Jordan?
You know that I will always answer this question positively. Even if we would not include Jordan on the list of our favorite countries, I am always very happy to get to know a new place and a new culture. Even if I don’t like something, I consider it an important experience.
We have to admit that Jordan did not bring us to our knees. I’m just not sure how much our impressions were influenced by the fact that Adam was quite cranky for almost the entire trip 🙂 (a crisis of the 5-year-old?).
What we mostly didn’t like was the ubiquitous rubbish and the lack of care for the environment. Jordan is simply drowning in garbage. Even in places where it seems not many people frequent (e.g. in the mountains or in the desert) there are piles of rubbish. The entire bottom of the Aqaba bay, where you expect to admire the coral reef, is strewn with soda cans. It is beyond our comprehension.
Another thing is the monotony of the landscape. Despite the fact that there is both mountains and desert, they all have the same color. Cities, mountains, deserts. Everything is in fifty shades of beige…. The most beautiful landscape we saw was along the road 65. Probably the north of Amman is greener, but unfortunately we didn’t get there.
Despite the fact that we did not come back from Jordan totally delighted, we are glad that we did not limit our sightseeing only to Petra and Wadi Rum, but we also saw other parts of the country. Perhaps this is why our impressions are not so WOW, but thanks to that we got to know the country, its culture, cuisine and various monuments better. We will probably not travel to this region for some time now, because we would not expect to see anything significantly new, but we absolutely do not regret our trip!

Some practical information:
The weather in Jordan at the turn of October and November was much better than we expected. Most of the time it was just hot (about 30 degrees). We experienced rain once (on the way from Amman to Petra) and then the temperature dropped to some 20 degrees. It wasn’t as cold in the evenings as everyone had scared us either. Usually a light sweater was enough. Well, except for Madaba, where in the evening we put on long pants and thicker sweatshirts 🙂
Wherever we could, i.e. in hotels and many restaurants, we paid with debit card (we mostly use Revolut), we withdrew cash in ATMs (unfortunately most ATMs charged between 3 and 5 JOD each time, but we managed to find one where withdrawals were free). We did not exchange any money at currency exchange offices, because we are generally don’t travel with cash, especially if we had to exchange crowns for dollars first, and then for dinars.
Currently (November 2021) 1 JOD is PLN 5.8; 1.26 EUR; 13 SEK.
We traveled around Jordan with a rental car and found it to be a very convenient way to get around the country, especially with children.
As always, we booked hotels in advance via booking.com (I wrote about hotels in individual posts).
With the matter of dress-code in Jordan, it is similar to Oman. I mean, there are no rules that tell us how to dress (also for Jordanians), but because most women are covered, we also did not walk very undressed out of respect for the local culture (and for our own well-being). T-shirt with short sleeves, skirt or knee-length shorts. On public beaches, I would rather not recommend undressing to your bathing suit, unless you want to be the main attraction for all the local young (and old) men.