Interlude. Shop Signs.

I'm oddly fascinated by signs - road signs, shop signs, etc. Don't ask me why because I have no idea why. Anyway, as we toured Jordan, I found myself snapping away at the banners that were hung up outside shops. Soon enough, I discovered there was a pattern to them.

The common approach to Jordanian signs is 1) make them BIG relative to the structure they hang above and 2) put a picture on them that describes what the store sells. So, even if you don't speak a single word of Arabic, it's not hard to figure out that this shop is a butcher....



....the one on the left is a green grocery and the one on the right is a general supermarket.



Here are a pair of signs for a mens clothing shop and a shoe shop....



....and here's one for an appliance store.



A picture really is worth a thousand words, especially when you don't speak the native language!

Thanks to the all the painted signs, we had absolutely no difficulty figuring which shops sold the stuff we needed to buy!