Hammamat Ma'in Hot Springs

http://www.sixsenses.com/evason-ma-in/

On the recommendation of my friend and ace travel agent in Manhattan, we finished the 7-hour trek through Petra, inhaled a big bowl of pasta and cocktails post-trek, and jumped into a cab for the 4-hour drive to Ma'in Evason Spa. A five-minute drive to the Dead Sea and set in a dramatic oasis 260 meters below sea level, I will find a way to return to these ancient thermal mineral springs, especially since there are so many ancient and biblical sites to see that we missed: Jerash - one of the most important and best-preserved ancient Roman cities in the Near East (that the Brits found too troublesome to haul back to the British Museum); Madaba - a city teeming with Byzantine mosaics; Mt. Nebo - with sweeping views of the Promised Land as described by Moses; and Karak - the site of a spectacular Crusader fort. Amongst all this are a few Jordanian vineyards and I was pleasantly surprised by the St. George cabernet.

Here are some snaps of the property and the surrounds, the first from the breakfast room:








A view of the spa down the hill from the hotel with the Dead Sea in the background.


The main feature at the spa - a gorgeous and restorative hot spring.









After a day of lounging and treatments at the hot spring, we went to dinner at a panoramic restaurant overlooking the Dead Sea and Palestine.



The lights of Palestine at dusk beckon...so close but not enough time to cross.

Useless

A momentary departure from Jordan (Ma'in Hot Springs photos still due) with a short nonsense entry. Last night I was at dinner with a Siberian-born Australian who has lived and worked in India, Italy and now the Arab Gulf and is married to a Palestinian. She made a delightful dinner and I brought some obscure foreign film dvds as the entertainment. We had to call the husband, who I thought was in Basra working but was actually in Jordan to ask him how to turn on the dvd player. The conversation I heard from my end on the couch was hilarity incarnate. My blonde Russian girlfriend imploring her husband with terms of endearment in Italian laced with expressions of frustration in heavily accented English with definitive articles missing. I was laughing and told her to forget about it and we watched something else on her Mac.

This incident recalled a previous ridiculous international phone expense. I found myself at the Serge Lutens shop in the Palais Royal and I was intent on purchasing the perfume a consultant from Hong Kong brought with her that I found divine. Note: I cannot for the life of me purchase eye shadow or perfume without supervision....for all my vast talents in matters of taste and aesthetics, I am useless in this realm and throw away good money on ill-fated purchases. I knew the bottle had a grey label and the contents was almost a red wine color. The Parisian saleswoman was not impressed in the least by my confusion when she placed two such bottles in front of me and I could barely tell the difference. I called our consultant, who was trying to recover from severe food poisoning in India before joining us in Paris, from my roaming Gulf mobile on her Hong Kong mobile 4 km away to ask her to go into the bathroom and read the label on her perfume. The sneer of contempt on the Parisian's face took an exponential hike, especially when I asked her to fill out the paperwork for the VAT reimbursement. That's the perfume above: "Fille en aiguilles," also sold at Barneys in New York. Sublime.

I was diagnosed with frozen shoulder (WTF, right?) two weeks ago and I am getting a cortisone injection tomorrow, just before I travel abroad for business at the end of the week. At least I'll smell good.