Post Obliteration!

Not a good title considering the murderous activity of Indonesian politics after midnight last night. And so two Australians who had made a major mistake in their lives are no longer alive. And in a few months their futile deaths will be out of the limelight and only their nearest and dearest will remember them. But it is a simmering worry below the surface of our consciousness to have neighbours who consider murder to be a legitimate activity. Perhaps the many Australians will reconsider their holiday destination from now on! I hope so anyway.
And so I write having survived the treacherous threats made by ISIS on shopping centres in Jordan and other places in the world. Of course we needed to say goodbye to our friends, just in case, to confirm that if just if anything untoward should have happened, then we would have found our end in the midst of doing what we enjoyed.
So of course I have a few photos of our magnificent historical journey...some tongue-in-cheek humour of course why not? Anyway here is AMMAN, the door to a fantastic journey through history in Jordan and so near and yet so far from the other warring nations...Syria, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Jerusalem...separated only in some cases by the river Jordan.

 From the highest point overlooking Amman I wondered what was being taught at the Architectural course at Amman University! I could see nothing but flat roofed 'boxes on the hillside' facing me. And I am not exaggerating! But in the more well off areas houses did show a little imagination with extensive balconies curling around the abode.

Then of course the museum kept our attention for some time acknowledging that this country was not just OLD but had so much history that coming from a continent where all the action started in the C18th ... the mind was overwhelmed.
I wondered had my partner seen the first ISLAMIC canon? No, of course not! Ha! I was up one on him! And so are you because the photo below shows just such a thing.

 And so I thought the domed church (Islamic) though many times before its reason for existence was to worship a Christian God!

   And coming crawling out of the soil of the Herculeneum were the remaining fingers and later the elbow of Hercules... the size of these remnants were massive giving you some idea of the actual size of the original statue.



So just a small taste of what's to come. Watch this space!