It was a day of long, cramped flights on Air France from Newark to Paris, a five hour layover in Paris where Bill slept on the floor for a quick 45 min nap. I got some water and a croissant, and then another 4 hour flight to Amman Jordan. arriving at 7:30pm. We were met by the Abercrombie & Kent man, Motasem Rababah before immigration who directed Bill to get 40JD for visas and walked me to the visa line. He walked us through the whole process, even cutting in line with our luggage at customs.Outside, he turned us over to Fadi Marish, our driver for our stay in Jordan. Bill realized he had left his carry-on inside at the customs screening, so Motasen went back in to get it. Fadi drove us the 30 minutes to the Four Seasons Amman, where another A&K man was waiting for us. He checked us in. The hotel is beautiful. There was an amazing white floral arrangement in the lobby - all white. All the hotels we stayed at had amazing security procedures, with gates, spikes, just to drive to the entrance, and then a security screening process just like at the airports.
The A&K guys said he had arranged for us to have dinner at the hotel's Italian restaurant, Versace, at 9pm, and since is was already 8:45, he changed that to 9:15. We didn't think we got a dinner, but he said it came (it didn't!). We went to our room first which was a lovely room, luggage came, brushed our teeth and went to dinner. We got a a 3 course meal menu instead of the regular menu. The service and restaurant were both lovely. We got an amuse-bouche of beet root with cream cheese sauce. For the appetizer, I got air-dried beef, cantaloupe, figs, hazelnuts, balsamic reduction, and Parmesan cheese. Bill got thin spaghetti with crab meat, chili, and lemon. For entrees I got crispy chicken breasts, spring root vegetables (asparagus, carrot, green onion, green beans), beet root gnocchi (which was really different), pesto cream sauce. Bill got roasted fillet of cod, lemon black pepper, risotto, fava beans, chanterelle and morel mushrooms, and saffron cloud.
For dessert we had a choice of tiramisu parfait or panna cotta parfait. I got the tiramisu and Bill got the panna cotta. Both were great.
We went to our room, showered, and went to bed at midnight.
Abercrombie and Kent was the contract company that arranged the National Geographic trip. They had representatives (all in the same tan slacks, navy blazer, and A&K tie) everywhere that facilitated everything for us. We really got spoiled with check-in, check-out, airport arrivals and departures, van arrangements, etc.
Fadi, our driver, had an amazing resemblance to my nephew Ryan Greene. He was a real sweetheart during our entire stay in Jordan.
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