30th Birthday

Obviously, Wednesday was my birthday. What I didn't mention was that I turned 30! Ryan and I did a few things that day, but the best was visiting a historical site in Amman called The Citadel.  This site has the ruins of a Roman temple to Hercules as well as a palace complex from the Islamic Umayyad period circa 720 AD.  We can see The Citadel from our apartment balcony and it's very impressive all lit up at night.

Here are some of the ruins of the Hercules Temple.

From The Citadel, there are great views of much of the city.

The structure behind us here is the main entrance/reception hall of the Umayyad Palace.

We walked around and explored the grounds a little.  There's also an archaeological museum that contained some interesting artifacts, including a small portion of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other gems like this one:

Early Bronze Age methods of brain surgery. In case you're unable to read the small print there - this poor soul underwent four separate surgical procedures called Trephining. You can see that the first one had almost completely healed (smaller hole on the right) before the last three occurred. Hopefully you find this as fascinating as I did, instead of just gross.

Also.  Pottery bombs?  One can never be sure.

After The Citadel, we visited some book stores and coffee shops and later went out to dinner. It was a nice day. Thanks to everyone who sent birthday greetings!