Amman Citadel

Amman airport is the international gateway to Jordan, with a capacity for more than 12 million passengers annually. Paraphrasing William Faulkner, to understand Jordan, you must first understand a place like Amman. It’s one of the rare national capitals not located on a river or port. The Eastern Mediterranean coast is similar to the Southern California coast. It’s dry, but the coastal climate has high temperatures of 65 in the winter and 85 in the summer, just a little warmer than San Diego but very pleasant. Mountains rise above the coastal plains, and beyond them is hard desert. In southern California, it’s the Colorado Desert, and in the Middle East, it’s the Syrian Desert. Amman is in the highlands above the coastal plain and rivers but above the harsh desert heat, kind of like Julian, California.

Jordon doesn’t have massive fertile river plains like Egypt or Mesopotamia or