Ethiopian Adventure- Part 2- Gondar

And the adventure begins!  We woke up early to catch a 7:40 flight to Gondar.  We took a taxi with some of the best fuzzy seat covers you have ever seen to the airport.  Once we got there we noticed a tour bus so we high tailed to to the entrance of the terminal.  After a bit of elbowing our way in front of the Germans from the tour bus, we made it into the terminal.  As we were checking in the gate attendant said "Do you need your bags in Gondar?"  We said yes, of course.  Then he said, "Well they were scheduled to go from Addis to Lalibela."  I said, well we would like to go from Addis to Gondar and have our bags come with us.  So he suggested we carry them with us, since it seemed that our bags had a different itinerary to use!

We managed to get checked in and on our plane. The flight to Gondar was only an hour long.  We arranged for the hotel to pick us up at the airport which was nice because he met us at the airport, loaded our bags and took us straight to the hotel.  The Gondar airport is about 20km outside of Gondar so we had a bit of a drive through the countryside on the way in.  The whole time Sue just kept saying, "This is what I think of when I think of Africa." We were in a what would probably be described as grassland, thought it wasn't flat.  We got to the hotel and checked in then we headed over to the Palace compound, Fasil Ghebbi.  

There were Palaces dating from 17th and 18th century.  I got a chance to play around with my panoramic shot on my camera!

After walking around the palace we went back to our hotel for some lunch before we headed out in an Ethiopian tuk tuk.  We went to Fasilides' Bath which is locally known as the swimming pool.  It was amazing and very deep!  The use it once a year as a pool of water that is blessed then people jump in. This is where I tried my first 360 degree picture on my phone!  Love them.  I am not sure how to share them so that people can view them but when I figure it out I will share it. 

 

Next we went up to Qusquam Palace and Church.  This is a round church with ruins from Princess Mentewab's Palace. 

    

Lastly we headed up to Debreberham Sellasie, which is another church on top of a hill but what an amazing one!

Ethiopian Adventure- Part 1

I have decided to start this blog with my latest adventure to Ethiopia for our October Break from the 18-25th, 2014.  I traveled with Sue from my current school to visit Sarah a friend whom I taught with in Thailand.  Our adventure began at Heathrow's Terminal 2, which only last May, Sue and I volunteered as testers to see if all of the systems were working.  It was nice to see to see the terminal up and running.  We both decided that it doesn't have enough grab and go kind of places to eat.

We arrived in Addis Ababa on Saturday morning after a night flight, which I hate by the way! As we entered the airport we all had our temperatures taken as an Ebola screening!  The wait for our visa took about an hour but after that we were able to meet up with Sarah and walk through customs using her red residents card.  We made it back to her apartment without much effort though it was easy to see that driving in Addis is not so straight forward with the pedestrians walking across anywhere they pleased, the dogs having a nap in the median, the goats grazing down the sides, and the horses having a rest in the middle of the roads!

After a quick nap we went out to lunch at a pizza place called Efoy.  They had good pizza. We decided to go to a shop near her school in order to see what things are available as gifts so that we had an idea while we traveled.  Then we went to Mr. Basket!  He had some amazing big baskets in front of his shop that would have made great laundry hampers.  I bought a couple of baskets to add to my collection at home.

After a bit of shopping we had a drink and a snack at the middle school principal's house before heading off to dinner at Gusto's.  We had a great Italian meal for dinner and were able to listen to some good jazz music before heading back and crashing for the night.

The next morning we had breakfast at the Radisson after a bit of a detour around Addis! Sarah then borrowed one of the school's drivers to take us to the National Museum and Mt. Entoto.  As we pulled into the National Museum parking lot Sarah informed me that this is where Lucy was housed.  I was so excited to see her, I mean how often do you get to see a 3.5 million year old fossil of humanoid!  I remember looking at my mom's book on Lucy over and over again when I was younger. The rest of the museum had a few history items from Ethiopia but it was still quite small.  Oh and it only costs 10 Birr - £.31 - $.50!  Can you believe that?  That is so cheap to see such an amazing piece of history!

 







 


We left the museum and headed to the top of Mt. Entoto which is one of the mountains that surround Addis Ababa.  It had a very typical Ethiopian Orthodox Church at the top, which was painted in the colours of Ethiopia! There was also a Palace of Emperor Menelik at the top.