What's happening in Amman this week?

Jordan's weekend falls on Friday and Saturday, so Amman goes out on Thursday evening. Rainbow Street in Jabal Amman and the cafes around Paris Circle in Jabal al-Weibdeh fill from about 9pm, with apple-and-mint shisha smoke hanging over the terraces until past 1am. Friday is different. Al-Balad, the downtown souq district below the Amman Citadel, stays mostly shuttered until the noon prayer ends at around 1pm, and the call from the blue-domed King Abdullah I Mosque in Abdali carries across the hills. Non-Muslim visitors can't enter that mosque during Friday prayers, so plan your visit for another day. Downtown, Hashem Restaurant on Al-Amir Mohammad Street is the exception: it still serves falafel, hummus and foul around the clock, and a full table costs under 3 JD. On Saturday, Amman's families come out, and from mid-afternoon you can expect a queue at Habibah on King Faisal Street for knafeh, the warm, salty-sweet cheese pastry with a crunchy semolina top.

For a first-time visitor, two sights matter most and both are better early in the day. The Amman Citadel on Jabal al-Qal'a and the Roman Theatre below it open daily; on winter hours they tend to close around 5pm, and later in summer. We'd get there by 8am on a weekday: at that hour the limestone is still cool underfoot, and the Dead Sea tour buses usually turn up around 10am. Afterward, walk down to the theatre, which takes about 15 minutes on worn stone stairs. The Jordan Museum in Ras al-Ain currently closes on Tuesdays, so put its Ain Ghazal statues, among the oldest large human figures ever found, on another day's list. A Jordan Pass, from 70 JD, covers both downtown sights and waives the visa fee if you stay at least 3 nights; buy it online before you land in Amman.

Amman sits in one of its easier seasonal windows right now, with daytime highs in the mid-20s Celsius and temperatures falling sharply once the sun drops behind Jabal Amman. The first winter rain tends to arrive later in autumn, so pack a fleece for evenings on the Citadel hill, where the wind picks up after 6pm. Sunday is Jordan's first workday, and the traffic circles along Zahran Street lock up from 7:30am to 9:30am and again from 3pm to 5pm, so a Careem or Uber ride that costs 2 JD at noon can cost double at those times. At today's rate of 1 USD to 0.709 JOD, 2 JD is about 2.82 USD. Do your weekday sightseeing between 10am and 2pm and you'll spend about half as long sitting in a taxi on Amman's hills.