The hotel’s reception staff is at your disposal for help in organizing excursions to nearby places of interest. There are many of them and the excellent road system makes it easy to visit places that might seem a fair distance away. There is no problem in avoiding Amman if you wish to see Jerash or the Desert Castles. Mount Nebo, the Dead Sea, the spa at Hamamet Ma'in, the Baptism site of Bethany, the mosaics at Um Ar Rasas, the Valley of Wadi Mujib are all easily accessible.

Rental cars are available or it is easy to arrange with a taxi to take you. The prices for this are not as high as you might expect and the hotel DON'T TAKE COMMISSION.

Pick up from the airport to Madaba	14JD	The Driver pay the parking fee.
Madaba to the airport	12JD	by day or by night
Dead Sea and Mount Nebo	26JD	one hour at each site
Mount Nebo, Dead Sea, and Bethany	30JD	one hour at each site
Mount Nebo, Dead sea, Bethany, Panorama and Hammamat Ma'in Springs	42JD	one hour at each site, extra waiting hour 3JD
Desert Castles (Amra, Kharaneh and Azraq).	45JD	one hour at each site
Hamamet Ma'in	18JD	with a one hour stop
Hamammat Ma’in and Dead Sea Panorama	20 JD	with a one hour stop
Jerash and Ajloun	40JD	one hour at each site
Jerash, Ajlune and Um Qaise	65 JD	Full day trip
Petra via the Desert Highway	54JD	One Way
Petra Via The King’s Highway	54JD	With stop at Wadi Mujeb and karak By Taxi
Aqaba via Wadi Araba	68JD	One Way
Airport to Petra via the Desert Highway	60JD	One Way
Madaba to Amman 7^th Circle	10 JD	One Way
Madaba to Amman Down Town	12 JD	One Way
Madaba to King Hussain Bridge	17 JD	One Way
Madaba to Shikh Hussain Bridge	48 JD	One Way
Madaba to Karak Kings Way	24 JD	One way (stop at Wadi Mujeb)
Madaba to Mukawer	14 JD	One hour waiting at the site
Madaba to Wadi Mujeb Reserve	45 JD	The driver will be waiting 4 hours.

A New Special tour organized by the Mariam hotel to the dolmens at Wadi Jadid.

Wadi Jadid located within 10 km to the south west of Madaba city at Al Fiha village. This Wadi is a field of dolmens (Burial Chambers or large stone memorials), where you could see more than 40 dolmens (12 of them standing in a very good condition) and the rest are damaged probably by earthquakes. Also there are several menhirs, cupholes and stone alignments as well. These dolmens dating to around 3000 B.C about 5000 years old, from the Early Bronze Age I. The locals there believed that dolmens are the houses of ghosts, they called it in Arabic Bit Al Ghula.

The hotel also organizes a bus along the Kings’ Highway to Petra with a short photo stop at Wadi Mujib and an hour at Kerak to allow a visit to the castle. (This bus runs when there is a minimum of three passengers and the fare is 18JD).

Mount Nebo is a short 10 kilometers from the hotel. This is popularly supposed to be the place of Moses' death and from which he was allowed to see the Promised Land but never set foot in it. Today there is a small church of the Franciscan order and a magnificent viewpoint overlooking the Dead Sea and much of present day Israel. On a clear day you might see Jerusalem.

This was one of the places visited by Pope John Paul II during his historic visit to Jordan in the year 2000.

The Dead Sea is another MUST excursion. It is about an hour in a car from Madaba. It is also possible to go there by bus. Everybody wishes to bathe in the salty water in which it is impossible to sink - see the photo at the head of the page.

The salt is itchy on your skin and will quickly rot clothing unless it is rinsed off quickly. There are a couple of places at the Dead Sea where you can shower and rinse your swimming costume. In particular a new resort called Amman Beach is very attractive. There is an entrance fee of 5JD which is very well worth it.

There are also a couple of places where you can take a mud treatment if you wish: the mud from the Dead Sea is noted for its medicinal qualities.

Another place offering enjoyable bathing and therapeutic treatment is the Hummamet Ma’in Hot Springs Spa (about 25km from Madaba). This is difficult to reach by public transport, since it is several kilometers from the village of Ma'in, where buses usually stop. The spa itself is a noted place of hydrotherapy, the waters contain potassium, magnesium and calcium among other minerals.

Day visitors can use the Roman baths, the family pool at the base of the waterfall and the swimming pool. The water in the family pool is at 45 or 50°C, the swimming pool is at ordinary air temperature. It is also pleasant to wander in the pine woods here.

The baptism site of Bethany is in the Jordan valley and is still being excavated. There are Roman and Byzantine ruins here as well as ruins from the Biblical period. "Elijah's Hill" is the place where the prophet Elijah is believed to have ascended into heaven and there extensive ruins here, some of them intact, of caves, baptismal pool and churches as well as the Rhotorius Monastery which dates from the Byzantine period and has a mosaic floor with Greek inscriptions.

The site is just above the Jordan river and looks down into a green river, one of the tributaries of the main river, and it is here that Jesus is said to have been baptized. The Pope John Paul II visited the site during his visit to Jordan in 2000.

Um Ar Rasas is a small village 25 kms south of Madaba and just off the Kings' Highway. It used to be a Roman garrison town and an important mosaic was found there in St Stephen's Church.

The main design shows a river with fish, birds, and water flowers, as well as boats and boys fishing or hunting. It is surrounded by vignettes of towns of the Holy Land such as Jerusalem, Gaza, Nablus and Amman. There are also views of towns in the Nile Delta, including Alexandria with its lighthouse.

This is already precious information for scholars, but in the spring of 2004 more searches were undertaken at Um Ar Rasas in land previously occupied by the Army. No less than 7 churches were discovered, all of them with magnificent mosaics. The Italian Church is paying for further excavation and for the preservation of this site. For the moment not much is generally known about the discoveries there.

The work is being undertaken by the great expert on Jordanian mosaics, Father Piccirillo of the Franciscan Institute of Mount Nebo.

The "Grand Canyon of the Middle East" of Mujeb Valley is about 35kms from Madaba. There is a viewpoint on the Kings' Highway and the bus taking this road each day will stop there for ten minutes.

But the valley is also a Nature Reserve under the protection of the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature and some exciting visits are possible if you book ahead to the RSCN at tourism@rscn.org.jo. In particular the canyon route provides some wonderful trekking and abseiling for the adventurous. It is also a site for the breeding of ibex and many other species of both animals and birds can be seen there. The main entrance to the Nature Reserve is on the Dead Sea Highway.

Although the Desert Castles are in the Eastern Desert of Jordan, they are easily accessible from Madaba in a day excursion. The usual programme will go to Qasr Amra, Qasr Khallabat and to Qasr Azraq, but you can modify this as you wish.

Jerash, north of Amman is also an easy day trip. A car will take about two hours to get there, leaving you with most of the day on the site.