June 24 saw us celebrate our 25th anniversary. Given the kids just want to come home to their beds and sleep, they wanted us to be gone to celebrate it somewhere far away.
San, the planner, did an amazing job of planning a one week trip with practically one day in each city in eastern Europe for the most part. Only thing I had to do was to give a list of places or Viator tours of interest in those locations.
Our first City was Zadar. We took three flights to get there. SFO to Frankfurt, then Frankfurt to Dusseldorf, and finally Dusseldorf to Zadar on different airlines. We were tired by the time we got to Zadar airport. Got a Taxi and were dropped off at the old Town. This is literally a walled area that looks like the inside of a castle where no cars are allowed.
It took us some time to find our hotel. It was a beautiful hotel right next to one of the gates to the walled area. We just got dropped at the wrong gate!
The whole place was beautiful. Cobblestones that were smooth from years of feet walking on them.. it had been hit by the war but was rebuilt. We had leftover packed food and we just ate that in the hotel room after walking around our hotel. It was already late and most of the stores were closed. So we went to sleep early.
The next morning we had to walk a mile to the group gathering point for our all day adventure.
The roads were empty but beautiful. . .
Our beautiful hotel.. (the room was decorated Honeymoon style).. The Palazzo venezia!
When San starts posing like this on day 1, I couldn't be happier!
Video highlights..
Have 1000's of pics and videos from this trip, but never got around to blogging about it. As soon as I came back work caught up. Then my dad's condition took a turn for the worse as he swallowed kanji into his lungs. At one point doctors asked my mom to notify next of kin as they didn't think he would survive the night. We were all there in India and he made a miraculous comeback and is home now. That meant the blogs never made it.
My goal is to clear those out of my camera and laptop by writing at least one little blog before bedtime everyday. . .
We were done with Wadi Rum. There were more flight changes for part of our group. So BIL and family had to stay in Amman for an extra day. The rest of us had rescheduled our return (which was originally through DC on United) to go through Doha on Qatar airlines with a 8 hour gap in Doha!
At least we would all be together till we were done with the dead sea experience. It took us a good 3+ hours to drive to the dead sea from Wadi Rum. We drove along the Israel Jordan border and stopped at Aqaba to see Egypt, Palestines West Bank, Jordan and Israel from the freeway. You can see it in the video. No wonder the place is tense all the time! The population density around the red sea area was incredible!
Then we were driving alond the dead sea. It was desolate. We could see a lot of farming on the Israel side, but nothing on the Jordanian side. We were blessed by the camel gods again on the drive. .
Zaid stopped us at a store to buy some beauty products made from the dead sea. We spent 30 minutes there. It was interesting to know so many dermatology clinics and skin care treatment centers sprout around this area based on the curative aspects of the salt and water.
From the store we went to the Crowne plaza where a lunch had been arranged. It was an amazing buffet with a lot of vegetarian options and we got to drink tea with fresh cow milk for the first time in 5 days! There was a cake cutting celebration! With our tummies full, we were apprehensive of going in salty water.. what if we swallow some and the lunch comes out?!
It was too late to discuss. So off we went. There is a beautiful elevator that takes us down to the water level in the Crowne Plaza. They also gave us towels and pool access as part of the service. It was all pre-booked. There are a lot of villas and long term housing accomodations in the crowne plaza. We learned that medical tourism, especially for dermatology is famous here and folks do stay there for 3 months at a time to take daily dips in the dead sea!
The signs that said Beach access were a lie. There is no BEACH! it is a bunch of rocks you walk on and eventually float.
This is highly risky. Out of the 8 people in our group and 6 others on this so called beach 5 of us had cuts and bleeding injuries when we came out of the water. Happy that no one hit their head on the rocks!
Yes, you do float in the water and if the salt gets to your eyes or mouth, it stings badly and you have to rush to the shower to clean it out. There is no sand and the rocks on the floor cut your feet! My thighs were all bruised and bleeding (realized it much later), San's back was all scratched..
Like my niece aptly noted "the dead sea will take away all your pain and then double your pain by the time you are done floating!"
It was an interesting experience though. You get smeared with oily black sand, let it dry on you for 5 minutes, then go wash it out, float a bit, then get hosed down with fresh water.. followed by selective sand washing again and a final salt scrubbing.
When the entire thing was done, my skin was very very smooth but extremely dry! The supposed super moisturization didn't work on my skin. Maybe the salt water dehyrated me a lot. We were asked to drink a lot of water after that dip. The dead sea has 6-8 times the salt of regular seas and is also oily!
We walked back the hotel area and hung out by the pool. Then said our byes. It was time for the four of us to leave for the airport.
It was an hour plus drive from the dead sea to Amman airport and we saw tires burning in different places. We were hoping that my BIL's family stay safe the next day they were on their own and made it to our flight on time.
At Doha we took a transit Visa for 20 USD each. Then we took a taxi (they are reliable and affordable) to the Central Inn (15 minutes from the airport) and crashed there for the night. We got 5 hours of sleep. We already had boarding passes on carry on luggage only. We were back at the airport in the morning just in time to clear immigration, security check and board our flight to SFO!
The long return flight was actually good and the Vegetarian meals was excellent. This is my first time flying Qatar Airways, and I have to say they did a great job!
A video highlight of the drive to the dead sea and the experience there.
For the first time, I have managed to finish blogging about a weeklong trip within a week of returning. My family knew I wanted to finish it this time and have let me keep at it...
Yet to blog about the anniversary trip from July. Hopefully will do that over the next few days!
Thanks for reading through this series!
This traveling family wishes you all a wonderful 2025!!!!
We raced out of Petra towards Wadi Rum desert to catch the sunset there. It was supposed to be the highlight of the evening.
We stopped at the mountain sides to see the desert from a distance for two minutes. Rest of the time it was just driving. We saw the original railroad that the Ottoman Empire had that was bombed out by the locals to help the British divide and conquer them.
After 2+ hours we showed up at the camp.
The terrain here is out of this world.. a lot of Alien movies are shot here. Martian was also shot here. Everything has a red glow to it. The sand eroded rocks formations look unique.
The person at the reception told us that we were the only guests in the entire camp for the night, thanks to flight cancelations and state department warnings! He was sad. He said normally the place is full two days before Christmas. Today we were the only visitors for not just this camp but most of the camps on this section of the desert.
Our guides realized there was not enough time to catch an open jeep ride or camel ride to go see the sunset from the dunes.. So they said "just go up to the top of the hill in the camp and you will get the view!".
We walked up, took pictures, saw yet another group of cats there and walked back down. It was eerily silent.
They would turn on the hot water for 30 minutes to an hour just for us given the camp was empty. We agreed on a time and it worked out. There was a dining tent and a post dinner fireside tent. We were the only visitors. The cooks were from Egypt and both of them did a wonderful job serving us vegetarian dishes. Did I mention the cabins were really nice inside!
Got my paruppu sadham and roti (the Jordanian version) and was happy! We had some good tea next to a fire, joked around for 30 minutes and it was time to go sleep. It was freezing outside and the cats kept trying to get into the cabins. Some of us were already showing signs of allergies thanks to the cats and we were running low on Claritin supplies!
The night sky is supposed to be amazing here.
We were able to see a star studded sky with our naked eyes after they adjusted to the dark, but there was simply too much light pollution from the camp itself. They refused to turn off the flood lights. Then there was light from all the other camps. We spent an hour sitting above the last cabin on the hill to take these pictures. Most of them are 10 second exposures..
a sample..
A gallery of night sky portraits..
By this time we got worried texts from the ladies on why we didn't come back. I tried to clean the skylight filter on my SLR as it was showing hazy images.. only to drop it on the floor in the dark. That "clink" sound of glass breaking was not good. Guess San is going to find out that I broke a 50$ filter by reading this blog..
We had a good nights sleep but we all had to set an alarm to catch the 30 minute hot water window before breakfast. I woke up earlier and ran up the hill again to catch some golden hour photos before sunrise. They were "meh".. and by the time everyone assembled, the sun was up!
A candid shot of a scared San.. she is afraid of all dogs and cats and animals in general.. these cats were very aggressive and woud hiss at us and try to scratch!
A better pic after I shooed the cat to the side..
A video highlight of Wadi Ram!
we drove out of Wadi Rum (Valley of the Moon is what it means) after saying bye to the camp..to some amazing views in the haze after a simple breakfast. There was no milk for tea. Apparently cows milk in an alien concept here. The cheese they have is all goat cheese. It was good.
