Petra, Wadi Rum & the Dead Sea: 7 Days in Jordan
A rose-red city, a Roman ghost town, the most beautiful desert on earth, and the lowest point on the planet — the classic Jordan loop, done right
Route Overview
Amman
A white hillside city of Roman ruins, rooftop cafés, the best hummus of your life, and a Roman theatre still cut into the slope
- Jabal Amman / Rainbow Street1st choice — central, walkable, cafés and restaurants
- Downtown (Al-Balad) — in the thick of it, by the Citadel and souks
- Abdoun — quieter and upscale, good restaurants
Booking links search the whole city — use this map (gold = first choice, blue = backups, red dots = main sights) to spot the areas on the booking site's map.
The most walkable, café-dense stretch in the city — Rainbow Street runs along the ridge of Jabal Amman, lined with restored 1920s villas, bookshops, rooftop coffee houses, and viewpoints over downtown. It's where Amman comes out in the evening, and the perfect low-key way to shake off a flight. Stop at a rooftop for a mint lemonade and watch the city light up.
The hill at the heart of Amman has been continuously occupied for more than 7,000 years, and the ruins on top stack the whole story in one place: a Roman Temple of Hercules with columns you can see from across the city, an 8th-century Umayyad palace complex, a Byzantine church, and the small but excellent Jordan Archaeological Museum. The view over the white sprawl of the modern city — and straight down into the Roman Theatre — is the best orientation to Amman you can get.
A 6,000-seat theatre cut into the north side of the hill in the 2nd century AD, when Amman was the Roman city of Philadelphia. It's still steep enough to make your legs nervous near the top, and the acoustics are extraordinary — stand on the stage and speak normally and the whole bowl hears you. Two small folklore museums flank the wings.
A downtown institution since the 1950s — an alleyway full of plastic tables where Amman eats falafel, hummus, foul (fava beans), and fresh-baked khubz for a couple of dinars. There is no menu; they bring everything and it is all excellent. The King has eaten here. So has everyone else in the city.
Amman's grand blue-domed mosque, completed in 1989 and one of the few in Jordan that welcomes non-Muslim visitors outside prayer times. The vast turquoise mosaic dome over the prayer hall is the draw. Robes are provided for those who need to cover.
If you want a sit-down Jordanian feast rather than a downtown counter, Sufra on Rainbow Street serves traditional Levantine and Jordanian dishes — including a proper mansaf (the national dish: lamb, fermented yoghurt sauce, and rice) — in a restored old house with a garden terrace. Book ahead for dinner.
Amman's flagship museum — the 9,000-year-old Ain Ghazal statues (among the oldest of the human form) and copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The late King Hussein's personal collection of classic cars and bikes, tracing modern Jordan through its vehicles — better than it sounds, and great for kids.
A hillside arts centre in old villas with contemporary Jordanian art, a leafy café and 6th-century Byzantine church ruins in the garden.
One of the best-preserved Roman provincial cities in the world, and almost nobody outside Jordan has heard of it. You enter under Hadrian's Arch, walk the oval colonnaded forum, and continue up the cardo — a 600-metre paved main street still rutted with chariot-wheel grooves and lined with hundreds of columns. There are two theatres, temples to Zeus and Artemis, and a hippodrome where they still run chariot demonstrations. It's the kind of place that would be mobbed if it were in Italy; here you can have whole streets to yourself.
A 12th-century Muslim castle built by one of Saladin's commanders to guard the region against the Crusaders and control the iron mines and trade routes. It sits on a hilltop in green, hilly country very different from the rest of Jordan, with commanding views over the Jordan Valley toward the West Bank on a clear day. The vaulted halls and arrow slits are wonderfully atmospheric to wander.
Both towns have simple, excellent local restaurants doing grilled chicken, mezze, and fresh bread for a few dinars. Lebanese House in Jerash is the long-standing favourite — generous mezze and grills in a garden setting, popular with Jordanian families on the weekend.
If you'd rather go further north, Umm Qais sits on a hilltop in the far corner of the country with Roman ruins of its own and a genuinely jaw-dropping view over three countries at once — the Sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights, and Israel. It's a longer day (110km from Amman) but a profound one. Swap it for Ajloun if views over history appeal more than another castle.
Amman's flagship museum — the 9,000-year-old Ain Ghazal statues (among the oldest of the human form) and copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The late King Hussein's personal collection of classic cars and bikes, tracing modern Jordan through its vehicles — better than it sounds, and great for kids.
A hillside arts centre in old villas with contemporary Jordanian art, a leafy café and 6th-century Byzantine church ruins in the garden.
Petra (Wadi Musa)
The rose-red city carved into a canyon two thousand years ago — and the single most extraordinary day of the whole trip
- By the Petra gate1st choice — walk to the entrance, no morning transfer
- Wadi Musa town centre — more choice and restaurants, short ride to the gate
- Upper Wadi Musa — valley views, often better value
Booking links search the whole city — use this map (gold = first choice, blue = backups, red dots = main sights) to spot the areas on the booking site's map.
A small town famous for Byzantine mosaics, the greatest of which is on the floor of St George's Church: a 6th-century map of the Holy Land made from over two million coloured tesserae, the oldest surviving cartographic depiction of Jerusalem. The detail — the streets, the fish in the Jordan River swimming away from the lethal Dead Sea — is mesmerising.
The hill where, by tradition, Moses looked out over the Promised Land he would never enter, and where he is said to be buried. On a clear day the view from the memorial church reaches across the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea to the hills of Jerusalem. The modern church protects beautifully preserved Byzantine floor mosaics. Quiet, windswept, and genuinely moving regardless of belief.
A vast Crusader fortress on a high spur on the King's Highway, built in the 1140s and once the stronghold of Raynald of Châtillon, whose habit of throwing prisoners off the walls became legendary. The castle is a warren of dark vaulted passages, halls, and dungeons you can explore for an hour, with sheer drops to the valley on every side. A dramatic mid-drive leg-stretch.
The King's Highway plunges into and climbs out of the Wadi Mujib — a canyon often called 'the Grand Canyon of Jordan.' The viewpoints on either rim are staggering, and the switchback drive down and up is a highlight in itself. Pull over at the marked overlook.
If your visit falls on a Monday, Wednesday, or Thursday, Petra by Night runs the Siq and Treasury lit by 1,500 candles, with Bedouin music — touristy, yes, but the walk through the candlelit canyon is undeniably atmospheric. Otherwise, an early dinner and an early night in Wadi Musa; tomorrow is a big one.
A short detour off the King's Highway to a UNESCO archaeological site whose Church of St Stephen holds one of the largest and best-preserved Byzantine floor mosaics in Jordan, with a lone 15-metre stylite tower nearby.
The hilltop ruins of Herod's fortress-palace where, by tradition, Salome danced and John the Baptist was beheaded — a dramatic, lonely citadel with sweeping views over the Dead Sea, a worthwhile detour for those not in a hurry south.
The modern museum at the visitor centre — Nabataean sculpture, coins and finds that put the rock-cut city in context. Free and air-conditioned.
A steep marked trail to the clifftop viewpoint that looks straight down onto the Treasury — the famous aerial shot, and far fewer people than the touts' 'viewpoints'.
You walk for over a kilometre down a natural fault in the rock — the Siq — between walls that rise 80 metres and narrow to a few metres wide, past the channels the Nabataeans cut to carry water into their hidden city. And then the canyon walls part and the Treasury appears: a 40-metre façade carved straight into the rose-pink cliff in the 1st century, impossibly precise, impossibly preserved. No photo prepares you for the scale or the moment. It is everything you hoped Petra would be.
Past the Treasury the valley opens into the city proper — the Street of Façades lined with tombs, a 7,000-seat Roman-era theatre carved into the rock, and then the Royal Tombs: a row of monumental façades (the Urn, Silk, Corinthian, and Palace tombs) cut into the eastern cliff, their interiors swirling with the natural colours of the sandstone. Climb up to them for the panorama back over the valley.
The other great monument of Petra, and the one most people are too tired to reach — which is exactly why you should. It's a climb of around 800 rock-cut steps up the mountain at the far end of the city, an hour or so of switchbacks past Bedouin stalls, and at the top stands the Monastery: even larger than the Treasury (50 metres wide), starker, and usually far quieter. There's a Bedouin tea tent on the rock opposite with 'the best view in the world' painted on a sign — and they're not wrong.
An alternative or addition to the Monastery climb — a Nabataean altar on a summit reached by a steep stairway near the theatre, with sweeping views over the entire site. A loop down the far side past the Garden Tomb and Lion Fountain returns you to the valley floor and makes a satisfying circuit if your legs are still willing.
You will have earned it. My Mom's Recipe and The Basin (inside the park, for lunch) are reliable; in town, Al-Qantarah does a traditional Jordanian dinner with occasional live oud music, and many hotels lay on a generous buffet. Eat well and sleep early — tomorrow you cross into the desert.
The modern museum at the visitor centre — Nabataean sculpture, coins and finds that put the rock-cut city in context. Free and air-conditioned.
A steep marked trail to the clifftop viewpoint that looks straight down onto the Treasury — the famous aerial shot, and far fewer people than the touts' 'viewpoints'.
Wadi Rum
Red sand, towering sandstone jebels, and a night under a sky so full of stars it looks fake — the desert they film Mars in
A miniature Petra 15 minutes north of the main site — a narrow cold canyon (siq al-barid means 'the cold canyon') lined with Nabataean façades, cisterns, and a rare surviving painted ceiling in the Painted House, with frescoes of vines and birds. Free, quick, almost empty, and a lovely low-key contrast to the epic scale of the day before.
The classic way to see Rum: a half-day in the back of a Bedouin pickup, bouncing between the great sandstone and granite massifs that rise straight out of the red sand. You'll stop at Lawrence's Spring, the Khazali Canyon with its ancient petroglyphs, the red dunes you can run down, natural rock arches like Umm Fruth, and a high dune or rock ledge to watch the sun go down and set the whole desert on fire. T. E. Lawrence rode through here; the landscape has played Mars, Jordan-of-the-future, and a dozen other planets on film.
Dinner is usually zarb — meat and vegetables slow-cooked in a sand oven buried in the ground, dug up at the table in clouds of steam. Afterwards there's sweet tea around a fire, often a bit of music, and then the reason you came: a desert sky with almost no light pollution, the Milky Way overhead, and total silence. The bubble tents let you watch it from your bed.
Dead Sea
The lowest point on the surface of the earth — float unsinkable in mineral water, coat yourself in black mud, and end the trip the easy way
It does not matter how many times you've been told — the first time you lean back into the Dead Sea and the water simply will not let you sink, you laugh out loud. At nearly ten times the salinity of the ocean, it holds you up like a cork; the classic move is to float on your back reading a newspaper. Follow it with a coat of the mineral-rich black mud from the shore, let it dry, and rinse it off — your skin will thank you.
The sun setting over the water with the hills of the West Bank and Jerusalem silhouetted across the sea is the trip's quiet final image. Most resort terraces face directly west. A cold drink, the salt drying on your skin, and the lights of another country coming on across the water — a good place to end.
The Dead Sea has been a wellness destination since Herod the Great built spas here, and the resort spas make the most of it — mineral mud wraps, salt scrubs, and the famously buoyant pools. After a week of ruins, deserts, and 800-step climbs, an afternoon doing nothing is an entirely legitimate use of your last full day.
If you'd rather not drive straight to the resort, this UNESCO World Heritage site on the Jordan River — the traditional site of the baptism of Jesus — is a short detour north of the Dead Sea. Quiet, archaeologically rich, and significant to millions; you can stand at the river's edge looking across to the West Bank.
One last buoyant float, a long breakfast on the terrace, and time to let the trip settle before the drive up to the airport. Jordan tends to do this to people — the nerves you might have had before you came feel faintly ridiculous now, and you're already half-planning to come back for the parts you missed (Aqaba and the Red Sea, the eastern desert castles, a deeper run at the north).
If your flight is later — the UNESCO baptism site of Jesus on the Jordan River, a short drive north of the Dead Sea: quiet, archaeologically rich, and you can stand at the river's edge looking across to the West Bank.
Almost on the road back up to the airport — the hill where Moses looked over the Promised Land, with a Byzantine-mosaic memorial church and a view that reaches to Jerusalem on a clear day. A fitting last stop.
| Category | Amount |
|---|---|
| Accommodation | $1,020 |
| Food & Drink | $430 |
| Transport | $480 |
| ↳ Car Rental | $290 |
| ↳ Fuel / Gas | $100 |
| ↳ Parking | $10 |
| ↳ Public Transit | $80 |
| Entry Fees & Activities | $270 |
A rental car is the best way to do this loop — the roads are good, signs are in Arabic and English, and the freedom to take the King's Highway and stop at viewpoints is worth a lot. Pick up at Queen Alia airport on arrival and drop at the airport on departure. An automatic is worth requesting. DiscoverCars compares the local and international agencies. If you'd rather not drive, a private driver-guide for the week is a popular, stress-free alternative.
Jordan has good 4G across the populated areas and the main tourist sites, with patchy coverage deep in Wadi Rum. An Airalo Jordan eSIM is the easiest way to stay connected without hunting for a local SIM on arrival.
Get eSIM via AiraloI used to skip travel insurance. Then I needed an emergency appendectomy three days into a Rio trip. World Nomads covered all of it — surgery, hospital, everything. They cover emergency medical, evacuation, trip cancellation, lost luggage, and adventure activities.
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- Buy the Jordan Pass online before you fly — it covers Petra, Jerash, the Citadel, Karak, Wadi Rum and more, and waives the visa fee for stays of 3+ nights. It's the single biggest saving on the trip.
- Petra is a full day of walking with serious climbs — be at the gate for the 6am opening, carry 2+ litres of water, and wear proper shoes, not sandals. The Monastery's 800 steps are worth every one.
- Dress modestly at religious sites and in smaller towns — shoulders and knees covered. At the Dead Sea and resort beaches, normal swimwear is fine.
- Friday is the Jordanian weekend (with Saturday); some businesses close and sites can be busier with local families. Plan the Amman day around it.
- Don't shave the morning you visit the Dead Sea, keep the water out of your eyes, and wear sandals into it — the salt is no joke on cuts or sensitive skin.
- Haggling is expected in souks and with taxis (agree the fare before you get in), but prices at official sites and Jordan Pass entries are fixed.
- Summer heat at Petra and Wadi Rum is genuinely dangerous — if you must travel then, start at dawn, rest in the middle of the day, and carry far more water than you think you need.
- Petra has touts offering donkey, horse, and camel rides, and 'shortcut' viewpoints — agree a price in writing or decline firmly. Animal welfare is mixed; many travellers prefer to walk.
- Desert nights in Wadi Rum get cold even in spring and autumn — bring a warm layer regardless of how hot the day was.
- Stick to marked areas near the Syrian and Iraqi borders in the far north-east; the tourist regions in this itinerary are entirely safe and routinely visited.
These sites, attractions, tours, and food spots are suggestions — your trip, your rules. Skip what doesn't interest you, linger somewhere you fall in love, stumble onto something not on the list. This guide is here to make planning easier, not to be followed to the letter. Make it your own.
We receive a fee when you get a quote from World Nomads using this link. We do not represent World Nomads. This is not a recommendation to buy travel insurance.
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