Rohit kept rolling in the bed for an hour more and joined me in reading. Started with the ‘White Tiger’ and was quite enjoying it. I was reading ‘Swami’ – a a celebrated Marathi novel by Ranjit Desai, which I started in the flight itself. It was quite gripping now with Madhavrao’s battle scene with Hyder Ali. We both read until 4:15AM and again slept for couple more hours. Then by 8:30 we checked out of the hotel to start a long ride from Petra to King Hussein Bridge. On the way we bought ‘Zatr’ (which has a great fragrance) as a memory of Jordan. Afram bid us goodbye at the departure gate on Jordan side around 12:30 pm and we transferred to Israel by 1:30pm by a bus.
Things to remember: You pay 5JD per person as departure tax when leaving Jordan + 2.75JD/person for the bus+1.05 JD/per bag. So indeed it’s a good idea to travel light :P. Due to unforeseen delays at the immigration on both Jordan+Israel sides, we met our driver Sosh Eie exactly 3 hours after the theoretical time of arrival. Mohammed from Discovery travels in Jordan had done a bad job of communicating with Sosh Eie that we will be late. Guess what that meant for us later on? She asked us for $50 as a tip when we got off at Hotel Metropolitan. We gave her $30 saying we did not have more. I was quite frustrated.
The hotel was really nice – located almost right next to the beach in Tel Aviv and also quite close to Allenby street (another version of Lakshmi Road + Hong Kong Lane in Pune). It was 4:15pm now and we had to eat lunch. We decided to go eat at Burger King and to my utter dismay 1 chicken sandwich meal + 1 fish sandwich cost us 64NIS ~ $20. Israel indeed seems expensive L !
After the lunch, we walked to the beach and enjoyed the lights show in the sky after a beautiful sunset. Finally I am back in the hotel, in my bed at 6:15 PM J J. Looking at the prices we have decided not to buy water here + at lobby we confirmed that it is safe to consume tap water.
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