The waiters at the MovenPik Hotel in Petra dragged chairs and tables together for the men to be able to sit as a group. They gave no help for the women, no offers of chairs for those standing. When Suzi and I offered the extra chairs at our table the women gratefully accepted. But to the waiters, who fawned over the men, those women were invisible. They were just the wives and daughters of the men the waiters were serving.
I had been to Petra before but wanted Suzi to see it. We walked into the ancient city twice, once in the afternoon to catch the city in the daylight, and once at night, a haunting experience. The treasury is a massive, and at the same time delicate, building carved into a pink rock face. It was lit by hundreds of candles. (The treasury was the “temple of doom” in the Indiana Jones movie.) We arrived at the treasury after a walk of a little over a mile through a narrow canyon, the Siq, and on arrival, were bid to sit on carpets spread on the ground to listen to a Bedouin music echoing through the canyon. We drank sweet mint tea. A three quarter moon cast shadows across the whole scene.
This is the second post from Petra. The first had the Siq and Treasury. This one has the rest, including the amphitheater and the city beyond the Siq and treasury.
