Our family of 4 just returned from a week in Jordan (7 days). It was wonderful, I wish we could have gotten at least another day or two. It was Christmas week, height of the cold season, but compared to Michigan it wasn't bad. The people were all very nice to us, no problems with being ripped off (except a Petra guide that gave us two hours instead of five, but we had a fine time exploring on our own.)
An overnight in Amman (the plane was 7 hours late, so no time to explore here at all, but we're not a city people anyway), up to Um Quais, Ajoiurn castle and then Jerash. The first two were good (especially the castle) but Jerash was really great. In our humble opinion, close to Ephasus quality, which is saying a lot. We spent the night in Madaba, saw the mosaics (well worth it), then to Karak (I wasn't as impressed as the rest of my family), then down to Petra for the night. The next day and a half were exploring Petra, and if you can spare more than one day, do it! There's no doubt it deserves its place on the new Seven Wonders of the World list. The second early afternoon we went to Aqaba for warmth and diving the Red Sea (very good). The last day we toyed with diving in the morning or going to see Bethany-Beyond-the-Jordan where Jesus was baptized, before we headed for one night at a Dead Sea resort. We chose the latter, were rather disappointed after all the other fantastic ruins we'd seen. It was almost sunset when we got to swim in the Dead Sea, felt pretty cold, but we got it out of our system.

Bottom line, go to Jordan! Fascinating country and people, great history, good food.

Thanks for the review. I've just returned from a trip to Egypt/Jordan and I highly recommend Jordan too.

I agree with your assessments wholly - Jerash was one of the highlights for us as, for once, I'd not really done much pre-trip reading and hence not understood what an extensive site it is.

We too found Madaba more interesting than Karak (and the various other desert castles we visited).

And Petra, well, what can I say? We'd like to go back, for sure! I think we were spoiled though in that we visited when UK Foreign Office advice was not advising against travel (until a couple of days into our trip) but was advising strong caution. It was just before the US went into Iraq. A lot of visitors cancelled their trips. So Petra was almost empty.

But you didn't get to Wadi Rum?

That with Petra was the highlight of our trip there last year.

Jordan is a great country to visit, as is Lebanon and Iran, and to a lesser degree Syria.

Nigel

Whoops, yes we went to Wadi Rum. Stayed a night in a fixed camp and rode camels Christmas morning before heading to Aqaba. It was good, but incredibly cold in the night (and we were prepared for cold!).

How did you plan your trip? Jordan is on my short list and I am wondering abou the logistics, etc.
Thanks.
Jane

How did you travel around Jordan, Rick and Pat? We had a guide take us by car to Petra from Amman, but also hired a car for two days to do day trips on our own from Amman. We drove ourselves to Jerash, Madaba and the Dead Sea. It was all most enjoyable, even the road checks and trying to decipher the road signs to find out where we were.
Amman was a great city to walk around in, and the people we met were pleasant and welcoming.
I agree - Wow! .

Being chickens, we hired Petra Moon to put together a program, and had a driver take us to the various places and hired guides as appropriate. It took several e-mails back and forth to nail down the program just as I wanted, which hotels, etc. It made for an easy tour with someone else doing the reservations and driving. And our driver Amjad was a great guy, very kind and informative. I thought it was an excellent value, much cheaper than an Egypt tour. One thing we could not believe is Petra Moon did not ask for a credit card number or any down payment at all, then did not want payment until we got to Petra on Day 3.