On Day 5 of our trip to Jordan we traveled outside of Amman, first to Dana Village in the Dana Biosphere Reserve. We had an incredible local lunch, and were served a dish called muqlaba, which literally translates to upside down – it was an incredible local meal. Finally, we moved onto Petra, and after checking into our hotel, we went to Petra by Night.
00:23 Breakfast and Leaving Hotel – To begin the day, I had a quick breakfast as the hotel in Amman, and then we packed everything up and headed off to do some traveling around Jordan. Driving towards the Dana Biosphere Reserve, we took our time, stopping off at a variety of different rest stops. One of the things I grew to love immensely while traveling in Jordan was Arabic coffee, and the good news is that coffee was available at every rest stop along the highway.
1:41 Maqluba (مقلوبة) at Dana Biosphere – The Dana Biosphere is a nature reserve in Jordan. The reserve is home to a variety of different natural environment, and starts on a plateau and descends all the way down in the Wadi Rum valley. The views of the valley were incredible. We continued driving until we reached the Dana Village, located on a hill overlooking the valley – it’s a historic town in Jordan, and they are trying to renovate certain areas of it – it’s an amazing little village. They had set up for us to have a local Jordan food lunch at a home within the village, so after walking around for a little while, we went inside to have lunch. There’s a famous Middle Eastern, Arabic dish, that’s also very common in Jordan called muqluba (مقلوبة), which directly translates to upside down. The reason it’s called upside down, or flipped over, is because the dish is cooked in a big pot, with meat and spices, or in this case chicken, topped with rice all in the same pot. When the dish cooks, all the flavors start to mingle and blend to create another incredible dish. When it’s finished cooking, the pot is flipped over onto a tray, so the rice goes to the bottom, while the meat stays on top – that’s the upside down part. After the rice and chicken was flipped onto the tray, it was then topped with lots of chopped up parsley, fried peanuts, and finally some lemon slices for decoration. The dish was incredible, the r
11:08 Wadi Musa, Movenpick Hotel, Musakhan for dinner – After our incredible lunch at Dana Village, we continued driving. Along the way to Petra, we stopped at Wadi Musa, which is said to be the place where Moses struck the rock and water came out. There was a rock there, and extremely clear water was flowing out. We drove to Movenpick Hotel at Petra, and we checked in. For dinner, we ate at the Movenpick buffet restaurant, and they had a good selection of both Western and Jordanian food. The dish I was most interested in eating was the musakhan, a Jordanian and Palestinian food of bread, chicken and spices, all cooked in lots of olive oil. It was my first time to try it, and I enjoyed it – and I can only imagine how much better it would be home-cooked.
14:58 Petra By Night – Petra is the most famous attraction in all of Jordan – some people will visit Jordan with a specific purpose to visit the historical city. One company decided to set up candles in paper bags and open Petra by Night, so you can visit the main Treasury at night. Ying and I took the walk, and it was pretty cool, but it was still so dark, that honestly I couldn’t really see anything, and my camera couldn’t really pick up anything as well. So stay tuned for tomorrow’s video where we visited Petra for the entire day!
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