Jerash, Jordan

Our first day here having arrived at the hotel local time at 1.00am, and up early. It's a one hour drive from Amman to Jerash but our driver made it in around 45 minutes.

Jerash gave us a taste of the scale of architectural monuments in this country. It's a massive excavation with work still in progress, of the remains of most of a Roman city. The cardo is nearly a kilometre long with over 500 towering columns, two theatres and three temples, plus numerous other buildings and remains of houses, the agora etc etc. Much of the new town is built over the remains of the Roman buildings, which were lost in the sand until the early 19th century with only a few of the tops of the columns poking out. There is 10-12m of sand to remove inch by inch, recovering bottles and pottery and mosaics. I took far too many photos.

We were sent by our guide to the top of one amphitheater, while he went in from below and apparently told the retired military duo that we were from Scotland, so as we descended the steps we were accompanied by the tune of Scotland the Brave on pipes and drum (extra - you'll have to hum the tune to yourself). There was no one in the entire place except us, amazingly.

I haven't seen a single bicycle and few motorbikes here today so it may be difficult to find something to Blip for this week's challenge