The Patterson Pair: Jordan Sights

Today was another busy day and I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of details but will try and put the main stuff into some sort of post. Left the hotel at 7:30 am and drove the two hours to Karak. Toured a crusader castle before hoping back in the bus and driving to Madaba, another 2 hours away. (I'm sure the castle is impressive but after seeing the Pyramids and Petra, it just looked like another building!) Arrived in Madaba just after 1 pm and found a small sandwich shop which was open and was even serving cheap food. Enjoyed two sandwiches and a smoothie for only 3.5 JD. The main attraction in Madaba is St.George's Church which has a huge mosaic map on the floor, depicting all the major Biblical sites in the Middle East. The map was unearthed in 1884 and is from the Byzantine era. Some parts of it have been lost but you can see most of the main parts.
In the afternoon we traveled along the King's Hwy, which dates back to ancient times. (This was the road that Moses wanted to take through the land of Moab but the local king refused.) Jordan has three main valleys and we traveled up and down one of them today, going quite slowly on all the hairpin curves.
Our last stop of the day was Mt.Nebo, where Moses viewed the Promised Land before he died. There is a "Moses Memorial church" at the top with some more impressive mosaics in it, along with an interpretive centre/museum which was funded by the Canadians and Italians! On a clear day you can see the Dead Sea, Jericho and the outskirts of Jerusalem from the top of Mt.Nebo but the sky was a bit hazy today so we weren't able to see too much. Before leaving the area we were taken to a "government approved" mosaic shop, which basically means the shop is owned by some friends of the tour guide so he gets a kick back from anything that is purchased! First we were shown how they made the mosaics by hand and then how the large vases were made. The shop was quite full so we were a little skeptical about how "hand made" everything was. Once inside the showroom there was a "mosaic salesman" for almost every tourist and they followed us around asking questions about where we were from and what we did for a living, most likely sizing up our spending money! They had some interesting pieces of art, furniture and swords, but everything was way out of our budget!
We arrived in Amman around 6 pm tonight, quite tired from all the touring and sitting that we did today. We'll be staying at the Hillside for three nights before leaving for home early Tuesday morning. We had to play musical rooms tonight before all the couples got their double beds and the rest got their single beds and non smoking rooms, but it seems that nobody has a room with working air conditioning. (Apparently they only turn it on during tourist season and apparently this is not tourist season!) Jordan is a bit cooler than Egypt but it's still a bit stuffy in our room, even with the windows open.
We're hoping to go to the ancient Roman fortress of Jeresh tomorrow and then spend the day at the Dead Sea. Too tired to write anymore so hopefully this all makes sense!