I've been finding it difficult to write about Amman. It's a fine enough city with a lively old area and a surprisingly modern and upscale new city. You see, the problem is that it was freezing and pouring with rain (or hail or snow as the case may be) most of the time we were there. That sort of clouds opinions. We managed to have a couple of excellent meals and meet some interesting people.

A man named Kair invited us to sit in his café and drink mint tea with him whenever we wanted to get out of the gross wetness outside. He was friendly and chatty and very emotional about his language and religion. It was very interesting to have someone so passionately, talk about the Quran and explain his love of it. Aside from that, we got in a few much needed rest days.

Then we decided, against better judgement, to take the nearest (but apparently more tedious) border crossing back into Israel through the West Bank. The taxi to the border was indulgent, but comfortable. We walked through the gate and suddenly were told to "hurry, hurry, hurry!!!" We were rushed through customs and onto a bus. At this point, I couldn't believe how quick and smooth things seemed to be. The bus drove through no-mans-land then came to an abrupt halt. We waited…and waited…and waited some more.

Finally, we were allowed to exit the bus, at which point everyone started rushing for the doors to "line up". I use this term very loosely since the Jordanians and Palestinians we were crossing with seemed to have very little concept of how lines work. After getting pushed out of place by an old Bedouin woman, followed by three nuns, I decided to channel my inner old lady, push out my elbows and join the masses in the shoving extravaganza.

I managed to make my way forward quickly upon employing my new strategy, and once I was near to the front, I simply reached back and dragged Brian up with me (he wasn't quite as adept at line butting game, but I'll learn him soon enough).

We caught the share taxi back to Jerusalem which oddly felt like an old familiar friend. We walked the twenty minutes to the car rental and started plotting our next adventure- driving in Israel.