Breakfast buffet at the hotel. Enjoyable.
Packed up to leave and we greet our driver outside the hotel. Pick up at 9:30 as requested! One last picture in the fabulous Amra Palace. Our driver Mohammed took our photo because we asked so nicely.
We got into our private vehicle (this time, not a pickup truck) to start heading back to the border via Aqaba, the Eilat equivalent (beach/tourist city) on the Jordanian side. Mohammed was mostly quiet during the ride, but we entertained ourselves for approximately 90 minutes, staring out into the beautiful desert hills. He did eventually get some Arabic music pumping through the stereo, and we LOVED it! We were all dancing in the car (as much as you can wearing a seatbelt and sitting in an uncomfortable seat) and recording videos on Denise's camera. As we get closer to Aqaba, we double check that we are actually going to see Aqaba, because the day before we arranged it with the tour company. But this guy might not know that and might just take us somewhere else! Eek! So he says, sure, Mustafa will meet us there. HOORAY Mustafa! Now that we're like obviously old friends, we are so excited to meet up with Mustafa again. Mohammed pulls up to the Aqaba office and Mustafa gets in the driver seat. He takes us to a pedestrian area in Aqaba to show us some shops and a park area. There are lots of people out and about, but one thing that is unique is that all of the women who are out (eating lunch in the park, walking in and out of stores) is wearing a head covering and traditional Muslim dress. This is to be semi-expected, but we saw no secular women. That's the part that I thought was more interesting. Even in Jerusalem, there are a lot of religious people - both men and women. But mixed in you also see lots of secular people, like myself.
He then met up with Mohammed again, and we all drove to the water. They wanted us to take the glass bottom boat ride, but we told them we didn't have enough time unfortunately. I guess they know that Eilat is our destination and therefore where we will spend additional money, not on the Jordanian side. Well, it was a worth a try. Meanwhile, we did manage to capture a picture by the water in Aqaba.
We got back in the car and to the border. We said goodbye to Mustafa who told us on the other side of the border we'd be greeted by Ze'ev who was our cab driver. Putting trust in this whole system, once again. The border was very quiet, by the time we were crossing, and going back the other way. We were no longer with a group; it was just the four of us so it went pretty quickly, the only exception being the Israeli side gave us a bit of a hard time coming back in. Rachelle, Carolyn, and Denise had all been beyond their expiration date on their original visa, so coming back in, they were each granted 2 weeks to extend their visas. I thought I'd have no problem with mine since I left the country on my 2nd tourist visa, and I was still within the dates. However, either because the clerk was cranky or because I came back with the other girls, he also only gave me 2 weeks. Now we all have to get in touch with the WUJS staff to help us not be here illegally. Thanks Israel for being annoying with the visas!
After much waiting, Ze'ev got all of us into the cab, and by request, took Carolyn and Denise to the bus station before dropping Rachelle and me at the Youth hostel from two nights before. We were pretty sure there was space there, because we had looked online at the hotel in Petra the night before, but we wanted to make sure, so we went right to the front desk, and they said they had space in an open dormitory room, meaning it is shared with others. No problem for us! We put our things down there, changed in our beach attire (shorts and tank tops!) and went back to the boardwalk area. We knew we wanted to enjoy our time on the beach. Fun drinks and watching the sunset - perfect end to a nice vacation!
We decided on frozen strawberry banana rum drinks, and a garlic bread appetizer to keep us held over until dinner time. Looks yummy and it was yummy!
We spent a good few hours on the beach watching the sunset. I'm a huge sucker for sunsets so it was nice to just relax and talk. Clearly spending 2 full days prior to this with Rachelle was not enough time so we HAD to spend more time together. We could talk (and did talk) for HOURS! It's a little crazy!
Once the sun went down, we took a slow walk back to the hostel to change into some warmer clothes and head out to dinner. We planned to meet Koby again for dinner, this time at an Asian restaurant we had passed on our cab ride to the hostel with Ze'ev, and Rachelle and I just KNEW we wanted to go there. Koby met us and we all loved our food, including sushi and noodles. He walked us back toward our hostel via the mall, where we walked around for a little bit, because on Friday the mall was closed. You know, that whole thing called Shabbat? So we went into a few stores to check things out and see what was on sale. When we got bored, we left for our hostel, settled back into our room via a nice cup of tea each, and said our goodbyes to Koby and went to sleep.
The next morning we got up early to grab breakfast at the hostel and head out to see the Underwater Observatory. It's basically the Eilat aquarium, including views of actual coral reef and fish, and live feeding times on the schedule. We knew we had to get back to the central bus station by a certain time to catch our bus back to Jerusalem, so we were hoping to squeeze in everything the aquarium had to offer before we had to go. It was just about perfect timing. We got to see sharks, turtles, play on the playground, see the reef under water, take tons of pictures, and have a bite to each for lunch. And we got ice cream! We could not have been any happier. We had a great vacation and got back in time to take the bus back to Jerusalem.
To top off an already fantastic vacation and time away from all things routine, cousin Josh called me to see if I could join them for dinner on my way back to Jerusalem. I said as long as Rachelle (my home-slice) could join us, then I'd be more than happy! We got off the bus at Kfar Adumim where he picked us up, and we spent a whole night with the Goldsmith clan! Rachelle wanted to take home all the kids, but I told her she was not allowed to do that :)
We finally made it back around 10pm to end our fabulous vacation. Welcome back to Israel!
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