Awoke at 3.30am!!!! Not surprising. By the time the faithful had been called to prayer at 5am (through loudspeakers attached to the top of minarets adjoining their mosques) we were shaved, showered and shampooed!! We had a leisurely breakfast of the usual spanish omelete, pancakes and maple syrup, toast and local black coffee. Then we went back upstairs and Tom had a nap. When he awoke we wandered up the street and bought another phone card and rang our girls. It...

Breakfast at 6am (Aqaba/Jordan days start at 6am, Petra opens at 6am) and collected by Isham, our taxi driver, at 6.30am for our 2 hour drive to Petra. He stopped at a tourist shop along the way but we didn't buy anything. We arrived a Petra at 8.30am. What a tourist trap! All along the walk down we had to keep saying "no" to the men who tried to talk us into having horse rides. From the entrance to the Siq (where we paid 20 dinars = $40 each) we were saying no ...

What an interesting day! We had brekky at 7am by the pool - pancakes, toast and black coffee. We then walked down the street to the beach and along the pavement by the seaside. The owners of the glass bottom boats kept wanting us to have a trip to the reef. We were amazed at how close Israel is. There were people swimming down there at 8am - I think they had slept there overnight and were bathing! They sit in the sand on plastic outdoor chairs! We walked down t...

We landed in Dubai at 7.20am, using instruments because there was no visibility until we hit the runway. I had watched "Pay it Forward"with Kevin spacey, Helen Hunt and the cute kids from "Sixth Sense"on the way to Singapore, but there wasn't anything good to watch on the next leg. Dubai airport was not as good as they claim - there were none of the Clarins products that I needed to buy. Emirates gave us a voucher for free refreshments and a free lunch - we did...