Tag Archives: Citadel

Not Bored Walker

Saturday 1 October 2022 – Warning – lots of photos for you to wade through today!

Pinch, punch, first of the munch. (I hate assonance.) One week to go before we head back to the UK and we start our penultimate adventure, our time in Nova Scotia. As expected, yesterday, spent as it was in travelling two time zones eastwards from Winnipeg to Halifax, was entirely devoid of anything worth telling you about with the possible exception of the taxi ride from Halifax airport to our hotel. The (somewhat elderly) taxi driver started out being courteous and interesting and ended up ranting about the incompetence of government and the unfairness of taxes. He also delivered us to the wrong hotel, but was good enough to apologise and drive us to the right one.

So, today we found ourselves in the capital city of Nova Scotia with reasonable weather in prospect, so there was only one thing for it, which was to go for a walk. Obviously.

We had a chat with a very nice chap at the concierge desk, Tim. One thing we wanted to understand was whether there was a tall building which would give us a view over the city. Our thought was that it would be nice to be able to look down over the Citadel, which is a star-shaped fortress, to appreciate its shape. Tim suggested we go with him; he took us to the top floor of the hotel and unlocked the banqueting suite there, proudly telling us that this was the banqueting facility with the best view in the city. To be fair, it was not at all bad.

It didn’t however, give us the view over the citadel that we’d really have liked, but it did have an interesting ceiling with some great chandeliers.

The other nugget that we learned from Tim was that Halifax has its own (modest) equivalent of Toronto’s underground city, although here it’s overhead rather than underground. It’s called the Pedway, and you can see one of its aerial corridors crossing the road in the second of the view photos above. Of course we had to go and explore it. As with Toronto and Montreal, it’s linkways between halls, with some stores and eateries,

but is still in development – there are many hoardings promising a bright future with more stores to be opened.

It also gave us a view back to our hotel – you can see the inward-sloping windows of the banqueting suite at the top of it.

We also had a chat with Tim about the hotel, which is a curious mix of modern and dowdy, more old-fashioned areas (e.g. the wing where we have our room). It turns out that a complex set of circumstances involving mergers, takeovers, divestitures and pandemics means that planned improvements have not yet started.

Anyhow, we had more of the city to explore, so we headed out to wander about according to the plan that Jane had formulated. We passed City Hall

which overlooks the Grand Parade.

As you might infer from the picture above, an event was brewing in the Grand Parade, involving people of African-Canadian extraction, dressed in their finery and setting up a sound deck. Their mood was jolly and we hope they had a good time, but we had a city to explore so had to move on. Before we did, though, I took a picture of a mural that overlooked a building site

and the City Clock.

Behind the clock above, you can see a hill, atop which is the historic Halifax Citadel (climbing it also gives a nice view over the city’s impressive – but closed for maintenance – Angus L. Macdonald Bridge and the Clock).

We decided to visit the Citadel, as they offered a decently low entry price for us two old people, and so began to appreciate that Halifax has a great historical richness. The Citadel was first established in 1749, and the present citadel, built starting in 1828, is actually the fourth fortification built on the site.

The citadel’s fortifications were built and rebuilt to defend the town from various enemies – the indigenous Mi’kmaq and Acadians, for example, raided the capital region (Halifax and Dartmouth) 12 times, four times against Halifax itself. While never attacked, the Citadel was long the keystone to defence of the strategically important Halifax Harbour and its Royal Navy Dockyard.

The present citadel took thirty years to build and the general introduction of rifled artillery (with greater range and accuracy than earlier guns) shortly after its completion rendered the costly installation obsolescent. It was partially rearmed in the 1860s and 1870s, and continued in use as a barracks into the 20th century.

It is easy to understand its superb strategic location, overlooking the original town and harbour. It’s a very well-maintained institution, staffed with people dressed in period costumes who can tell you about various facets of life there in the 18th Century.

The central courtyard

is littered with cannons

as are the ramparts,

including a 12-pounder

which is still active and which is fired every day at noon – apparently a really loud bang.
After our visit, we walked along to the Public Gardens, a very pleasant environment.

Items of interest included a weeping beech tree

and a beautifully-coloured Blue Jay.

After the gardens, we passed the statue of Winston Churchill

were checked out by a starling

and then visited St. Mary’s Basilica,

a cathedral with a very handsome interior.

I was particularly struck by the stained glass half-dome above the altar. It being in the competitive nature of these things, the cathedral has, close by, the Anglican Church of St. David and

St. Matthew’s United Church.

Our rambling then took us in the general direction of the harbour, but en route we noticed that among all the modern high-rise constructions there are plenty of handsome old buildings in the city.

The downtown area has some interesting buildings, too;

and we were pleased to note that there is street art among the attempts to make the city look attractive.

We reached the harbour clock

which marks the start of a boardwalk stretching a couple of kilometres south, from the ferry terminal to the seaport. A lot of effort has gone into making this an attractive and pleasant area to walk, with artworks both mysterious and quirky along its length

(the tower structure is covered with plastic flaps, which flutter in the breeze – it’s rather lovely)

(the above street-light diptych is called “Get Drunk, Fall Down”)

as well as eating and drinking establishments. One of them, the BG (Halifax Beer Garden), was obviously paying its local tribute to Germany’s Oktoberfest, it being October first and that.

There is a life-size replica of the flagship of Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage of circumnavigation, 1519-1522 – the Trinidad

which in its day would have had 45 crew on board. I know people were smaller in those days, but I reckon it would still have been pretty cosy.

The rest of the walk down to the seaport passes many items of statuary – The Émigré, A tribute to Women in History, Samuel Cunard and three of the many examples of what might be figureheads that line the boardwalk here.

One significant statue is of Ruth Goldbloom, who fought for Pier 21 in the seaport to be restored and commemorated in recognition of the nearly one million immigrants who were processed through it between 1928 and 1971.

The plan was to get to Pier 22 which we thought might have some nice eateries and/or drinkeries. We were wrong. It turns out to be a tourist tat haven only open on cruise ship days intended, I imagine, to attract people who are boarding and who need to find just that one more special something for a special someone. Since there was a cruise ship in, only slightly larger than the substantial buildings of Pier 22,

it was open.

By this time, we were feeling somewhat sharp set, so we made our way back along the boardwalk with the idea of eating at a place that we’d seen earlier on, called Sea Smoke. There was a diversion en route in the form of a 1968 Routemaster London Bus,

used for hop-on-hop-off tours and, unsurprisingly, somewhat modified from the original,

because getting off the way we UK folk might consider would probably precipitate a traffic accident and lot of attendant paperwork. So an alternative exit is needed for the passengers

and an alternative entry for the driver.

As we ate our (very fine) meal at Sea Smoke, the cruise ship which had been at Pier 22 came by on its way out;

I’ve never seen so many radar aerials on a boat before.

We watched the ship do a graceful pirouette before exiting the harbour and then we ourselves exited the restaurant, which is distinguished by having many fire tables outside – very pleasant as the evening was chilly.

By this time, the light was fading (possibly matching your interest level in this post).

We passed a final, mystery piece of art

and then, as the evening light flared and then died,

we made our way back to the hotel.

Again, sorry for a long post with lots of photos, but I hope you found the read worthwhile. We had a really enjoyable day discovering the historical, arty and eat-y sides of Halifax, which comes across as being a very pleasant place to be.

Tomorrow has a planned excursion, if all goes well – a 10 mile hike. If we survive, I will be sure to document our progress here, but for now it’s time for bed. See you tomorrow!

Day 2 – In the Amman City of Jordan’s capital

Monday 16 May 2022 – A shorter day beckoned, although you’ll see from the number of photos in this entry that the intensity didn’t diminish much from yesterday.  However, we didn’t have to get under way until 10am, when we met our driver, Saeed (since we now have his card, we know how to spell his name properly; but I’m not going back to correct the joke), and our guide for the day, Marwan, and set out to explore Amman. As it turned out, we did the itinerary in the reverse order of what Audley had described in our literature, but since we hadn’t really read that, it didn’t really make much difference.

Our starting point was the Citadel of Amman, the city’s historic and archeological centre. Marwan gave us a long, detailed and complex run down of the cultural influences that have formed Jordan and Amman.  The highlights are summarised on some monoliths just by the Citadel entrance, which trace the naming of the city as the various cultures came and went:

  • Rabbath & Ammon – Iron & Bronze Ages and the Greeks
  • Philadelphia – the Romans and the subsequent Byzantine period when they converted (Christianity, rather than North Sea Gas)
  • Amman – the arrival of Muslims and the Ottomans.

(Round the corner on this patch is a stone dedicated to, inter alia, the British influence which started after World War I.  Several of the key letters have fallen off this one, so, for example, it would appear to start with the “itish Mandate” from 19AD – 1946AD.)

The cultural roots of Jordan are utterly bewildering, as wave after wave of nationalities have washed over the place and left some influences and picked up others. Arabs of many persuasions, Muslims, Turks, Kurds, Bedouin of all sorts of nationalities, and even Gypsies (of three different types, apparently) have come and either gone or stayed and this makes Jordan a real melting pot.   The Citadel, however, displays principally its Graeco-Roman roots.

It being a Citadel, it’s on top of a hill to maximise its defensive chops, and so you can get a great view over the old city of Amman – “old” in this case meaning from about the last century.

There’s an obvious exception to the “last century” tag bang in the middle of that picture – the Theatre – and we’ll come to that later.  But Marwan did educate us on one point of subtlety about its construction which gives away its Greek roots.  When Romans built theatres, they made them self-contained, stand-alone constructions, whereas the Greeks tended to build them based on and incorporated into natural features such as a hill; you can see this is the case with Amman’s Theatre.  We visited it later so there are more photos below.

A couple of other things about the old city of Amman.  Firstly, its colour, or, rather, lack of it. The buildings are of a uniform sandy colour, and this is mandated. The idea is that it should not differentiate itself too much from the hills upon which it is built.  Secondly is something you might not even notice until someone points it out, and then you can’t unsee it: white tanks on top of all of the buildings.

These are water tanks, and the reason they’re needed is that water is only pumped to any one area of the city on one day a week. So each building gets to fill its tank, but this has to last for seven days.

Our route round the Citadel took us past the Temple of Hercules

and then further on past the remains of an episcopal church.

Marwan pointed out that this was a view over the religious history of the city from pagan to Christian.  The site also had a palace from the Ummayad period (8th Century), which had a stone roof until an earthquake did for it; a team of visiting Spanish archaelogists (there’s a strong connection with Andalucia as this became part of the Ummayad caliphate) subsequently built a wooden dome clad in lead.

The varied cultural roots of Jordan continue in the details of the decoration of the stonework inside the building.

If you look carefully, you can see a cross between the two arches, betraying Christian influences.

As we walked outside, we were distracted from all this cultural hoo-hah by the appearance of a lark

and, delightfully, a hoopoe.

The next stage on the journey round the Citadel was the museum, which contains all sorts of historical artefacts from all over the Arab world. I’m not, frankly, much into the detail, but a couple of things stood out.

Lovely bowls, yes, but – Tupper ware?  If someone reading this knows any credible historical reason why this is not a mis-translation, please answer in the comments section. There were some striking clay coffins

seen here with the alarm sensor that Jane triggered when gesturing to a detail on the coffin.  But the minders let us off with a mild beating and we went on our way.*

We returned to the car and Saeed took us on a short drive so we could see the old town, which is exactly as colourful, hectic and chaotic as you would expect from having seen how they drive over here.

We actually started this part of the tour by going to the Theatre (behind us in this shot) but simply getting across the road was an act of derring-do.

The Theatre.  Ah, yes, the Theatre, originally built between 138 and 161 CE, during the rule of the Antoninus Pius.  It’s massive – seats 6,000 apparently.

Marwan, ever a source of intriguing nuggets, told us that one of the ways that historians calculate the number of inhabitants of a Roman city was based on the size of the theatres.

Before we got to clamber up all those steps, we looked into the two small museums on the Theatre site, the Jordan Folklore Museum and The Jordanian Museum of Popular Traditions.  In the latter of these, we had a bizarre encounter with two young Arab ladies who spotted what a big camera I had and wanted me to take their picture with it.  Trouble is, they spoke no English.  Jane got Marwan to translate and even he was struggling to understand what they wanted, since they originally wanted Jane in the picture as well.  That was a non-starter.

It turned out that they wanted to be photographed with a tourist so they could show off their cultural credentials, presumably to their mates on Instagram; but they couldn’t grasp the technicalities of transferring a picture from my Nikon to their phones and for some reason didn’t want to use either of their phones (both iPhones, I might add, so would have been perfectly capable of providing a picture). So, here they are, immortalised on a platform that will be read by literally one or two people. Probably Jane and me.

After we agreed that we couldn’t (wouldn’t) help them, we looked around the rest of this museum, the folklore one,

which included a model of a chap selling a liquorice drink, which Jane found rather fetching.

For myself, I was taken with a display that included music instruments.

Bottom left you see implements for grinding coffee, which was a rhythmic exercise, thus often done to music.

The other museum had some examples of mosaic work and also further models of costumes, including a Bedouin Police Uniform

designed, apparently, by the British.  I never satisfactorily understood how that happened.

And so to the Theatre itself. Of course we had to climb all the way to the top.  There were many, many steps, not all of them completely safe.  But the view from the top was quite something

and then all we had to do was to clamber down again, a process which would sting quite badly if one got it wrong.  Happily, we made it to the bottom unscathed, and carried on our walk into the bowels of Amman Old Town.  Again, crossing the road to get there was far more dangerous than anything we’d encountered on the Theatre steps.  It’s a vibrant, colourful area.

Marwan took us on a small detour through a fruit and vegetable market, which was exactly as noisy, crowded and exotic as you might expect (I never once found a position to stand where I wasn’t in someone’s way within five seconds) with all sorts of fruits and leaves and spices the like of which we knew not.

The final part of the tour, and continuing the cultural induction aspects, was lunch. This was taken in a restaurant called Hashem which seemed to span several properties, but had a very simple offering: pitta bread accompanied by salad and pickles and any or all of falafel, fava beans and hummus.  Tea, coffee, coke or water were the available drinks, and everything was served on a plastic sheet with no cutlery or plates or luxuries like that.  Basic, it was. Delicious, it was.  I even took a photo of it, but it’s more than my life is worth to share it here. After that, Marwan took us for pudding to a shop which is part of a chain called Habiba sweets.  The menu is largely incomprehensible, even the bits in English.

Znood set, anyone? Marwan ordered us something that turned out to be coarse kunafeh – shreds of pasta on a cheese base, topped with syrup and ground pistachios. It’s the second from right in this picture

and was, you guessed it, delicious.  Vastly calorific, but, hey, we’re on holiday.  The shop also sells sweets and has a beautifully-crafted display.

And that was it for the day.  Saeed took us back to our hotel where we promptly fell into a siesta, only waking in my case to write about the day before all the details got lost.  Quite a few of them did, but I hope there’s enough in the above to have entertained you thus far.

(Later: having slaved over this blog entry, we went down to the hotel bar for a couple of drinks

 

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and ended up having a very enjoyable chat with the bar staff – some compensation for the extraordinary price for the drinks. You can drink alcohol in Jordan, but it’s not a cheap pastime.

Tomorrow we leave Amman for the next stage of our holiday here.  We go to Petra and I hope that the prospect of reading about that in these here web pages will keep you coming back for more, to learn how we got on.

 

*  I’m joking. A chap poked his head round the corner and then went away again.