Trip to Holy Land - Day Four

We left our home, Sunday, May 4, 2014, and now it was Thursday, May 8.  After spending 3 1/2 wonderful days in Paris, we were now moving on to the second part of our adventure.  We met our transfer to the airport a little after 10:30 a.m. for our flight to Amman, Jordan, at 2:45 p.m.  At the airport, we met up with our two brothers and their wives, Jerry & Shelly, Blair & Denise, and met the rest of our tour group who we would be traveling with.  They had arrived this morning from the states around 11:00 a.m., so they were really tired. 

We had arrived in plenty of time to get checked in, so we had fun visiting with everyone while we waited for our flight to depart.  However, our flight was delayed about three hours because of a baggage handler strike (which they say happens frequently in Paris.  Someone is always on strike!)   Instead of leaving at 2:45 p.m., we left around 5:30 p.m., which put us arriving around 10:30 p.m. in Amman at the Queen Alia International Airport.  It was a beautiful airport.  After picking up our luggage, our bus was waiting, but we didn't depart for about another hour because we were waiting for a couple from Utah who would be joining us on the tour but were flying in from Holland.  

The bus ride took us about 40 minutes and it was so dark that we really couldn't see much.  We finally got to our hotel in Amman at 2:00 a.m., the Le Meridien Hotel.  

I took this picture the next morning.  It was a spectacular hotel!  The first thing upon arriving, we had to go through a metal detector and all our bags were x-rayed. 

 In addition, across the street were armed guards with gunmen around a Humvee protecting the hotel.  We realized, we definitely "weren't in Kansas anymore!" 

 We were all hungry and exhausted!

We missed dinner so the hotel had prepared box lunches for us that we picked up as we got our room keys.  A bed never looked so good!  Tomorrow we would have to get up early with only five hours sleep because our adventures were about to begin!