Tales of travel, humor, sarcasm and other nonsense.

We did our best to look past the nation’s troubled history and just enjoy the people, the food, and the landscapes.

Even when you try to escape Jerusalem’s religious underpinnings, you can’t completely. No matter where you go, religious faith – and the ways people express it – is ubiquitous.

How to write about Jerusalem? What can I say that hasn’t already been said ten thousand times?

Believe it or not, we weren’t the only crazy tourists choosing to spend a whole day and night in Wadi Rum in August. Despite temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, our large Bedouin camp was fully booked.

The Nabataeans had no way of knowing that Petra’s greatest glory lay far in the future, when it would become a major tourist destination.

We could have traveled to Petra by zipping down Jordan’s modern Desert Highway. Instead we took the slower, scenic route.

Our Middle East journey began in Amman, the capital of Jordan and home to almost half of the country’s more than 10 million inhabitants.