Petra

Huge crowds at the entrance. In the more distant corners there is greater peace although the hawkers are everywhere. Its hard to describe the site and give a flavour of the contrasts, its huge and scattered, the bedouin give it a medieval air with their goats and gorgeously appointed camels but the crowd is modern and international, the Nabatean monuments can also have a curiously modern flavourm a sort odd art deco look as they copied fairly cheerfully all the civilizations around them, as traders they knew them all. Its clearly worn with the ages and the Roman bits in the middle can be rather at odds with the rest, The rest houses and stalls selling all kinds of junk blend in fairly well. I saw some nice cats but I might save those for a more co operative machine. We have a lecture and then dinner still to go, I hope to stay awake for both.