A few years ago my parents took a trip to Jordan, which ended in one of them repatriated to the hospital due to a medical emergency the day before visiting Petra. In 2022, as Covid wound down for a bit during the summer months, they stated that they would like to return in order to get over the bad memories, and gather the courage to travel internationally again. I joked that they should take me along for “bodyguard services”. They decided to do so, and invited my sibling along. This is I guess our whole-family trip since… 2000. And since it was what my parents wanted, they called the shots, purchasing a packaged tour to Jordan | Al-ʾUrdunn [ٱلْأُرْدُن]. While these are not much of my thing, it is true that they might be the best – and possibly safest – way to visit the country; our particular tour had positive and negative aspects to it, as it often happens in life.

Our tour included hotels, transportation, tickets to the attractions, breakfasts and dinners – without drinks. We had to pay for lunches and any other drink, and these were usually programmed into the trip, leaving us without many options anyway.