My First Day in Petra.....

(Quick note...this is part two of the Petra Series and if you haven't read the first post, scroll down and do that first!)

We decided to sleep in before starting the first day of Petra. After buying a two day pass, we started the walk down As-Siq, the 1.2 km long entrance to the city, most of which is a canyon that was created by many, many earthquakes. It was a good start and the inside of the canyon was amazing. The canyon walls were extremely colorful, filled with different shades of reds and browns.

Then suddenly through the canyon walls you see a bright light and what looks to be a huge building and As-Siq opens up and you suddenly have Al-Khazneh (the Treasury) staring at back at you. This building is the one that you usually see when looking at pictures of Petra. It is an amazing site. It is absolutely huge and carved right into the sandstone walls! You really start to wonder how these people were actually able to do this 2,000 years ago.

After taking some pictures, we turned and headed down the Street of Facades, a little street that has the remnants of tombs on either side. A short walk later and the street opens up to the Theatre, a 7,000 seat, Roman style amphitheater in the city. It was stunning.

From there we continued down the path and then veered to the right to check out some tombs high up on one of the mountains. We then went back down to the path and it lead us to the Colonnaded Street (an ancient street) where you can see some old pillars and the remains of what were probably stalls for vendors. We then passed the Qasr al-Bint (the only free-standing structure left after thousands of years of floods and earthquakes). We stopped to have lunch before beginning the next leg of our journey.

After lunch we began the ascent to Ad-Deir or The Monastery, which is probably the second most popular site in Petra. It is an 850 steps up a long rock-cut staircase, donkeys that carry up tourists (not to mention the remains of what the donkeys had to eat earlier). It took us around 45 minutes to climb up, but when we did a huge building was awaiting us. Ad-Deir is a bigger building than The Treasury and it is very well preserved. After taking a few pics and stopping for a Coke, we went back down the mountain (this time only taking 25 minutes).

We were exhausted at this point and decided that we would call it a day and we walked back to the Treasury, As-Siq and eventually out of Petra. Luckily our hotel wasn't very far away (roughly 300 m from the entrance) and we were back at the hotel pretty quickly.