I booked a nice hotel starting the night before Jay was due to arrive. It had a bath like a jacuzzi, but with no instructions and no markings on any of the many taps! I decided to make use of the rain shower instead and had the best shower of the last 2 months.
I went to the airport the next morning to pick him up, which resulted in a very long wait due to coronavirus checks! Finally he got out, it was so great to see him! Went back to the hotel and both had a nap, as Jay had been on a night flight and I had woken up at 3am worrying he was going to be quarantined for 2 weeks!
We then headed out to Bait al Mandi, a Yemeni restaurant that has good vegan options. Jay got his fix of hummus and we enjoyed their fresh juices and coffee ceremony afterwards! Jay fell in love with the coffee straight away.
Next came a relaxing dip in the Hilton pool- it’s a volcanically heated pool so it’s incredibly warm without being heated. We floated around for ages and then headed to Union Bar and Restaurant, a place that looks over meskel square. They do cocktails and good food, and it has a view over Addis. It was nice to go to such a ‘datey’ restaurant with a date for a change!
We then headed back to the hotel for a comfy sleep on the amazing mattress.
Next day we got up and had breakfast at the hotel (slightly odd combination of fruit, bread, pasta, vegetables and injera – we didn’t try everything!) and then headed out to the hospital to drop off presents to my colleagues. They were extremely excited to meet Jay! We planned on staying half an hour, but as it’s Ethiopia, we were plied with coffee, tea, donuts and kollo (roast barley and chickpeas – everyone’s favourite snack), so ended up leaving well over an hour later. However, it was really nice to see them all one last time, and they all seemed to like their gifts.
After a round of contact free goodbyes (coronavirus rules) we set off to the national museum to see Lucy, the 3.2 million year old first hominid found (in Ethiopia). Lucy was tiny- the size of a child but it’s thought she was a young adult. There was also an extremely old tiny child who had died millions of years ago aged 3. It was very interesting, and at 20 birr (50p) each excellent value!
We then dropped in to book our tour for the Danakil depression as it was on the way, though a rather longer and more polluted walk than I had anticipated. After that we found lunch in a nice restaurant where we saw it had started to torrentially rain, and then the power went out after a generator blew! However, we had a nice relaxing time on the restaurant sofas in the dimness.
Next came the red terror museum, after getting a taxi in the pouring rain. The police were moving everyone on making it almost impossible to stop, not helpful when you want to get in a taxi!
The red terror museum is a museum dedicated to the people that died in the Derg, when Mengistu, the communist dictator ruled for 17 years. I think he came into power after a coup which kicked out Haile Selassi. That was 1974 and he remained in power until 1991 when he got kicked out by the Ethiopians and ran away to Zimbabwe to hang out with/hide with Robert Mugabe. 100,000 people died due to his reign, there were torturings, executions, enforced moves to rural areas and a huge famine. Not a nice bloke!
The museum was quite good , but could have done with a few more explanations of some of the exhibits. If you can’t read Amharic and don’t know all the ins and outs of the Derg it was a bit tricky to follow. There was a wide variety of exhibits – paintings, photos, victim’s clothing. It was quite moving even if we didn’t understand absolutely everything.
Both exhausted, we decided to go home for a bit of a rest, and then dinner. We had a look at the hotel menu, rejected it, went to an Indian restaurant round the corner which turned out to have shut an hour before google claimed it would, decided not to walk further in the pitch black rain, and went sheepishly back to the hotel restaurant, which apart from the service, wasn’t bad.
We then had an extremely early rise (not early enough as I set my alarm an hour too late!) the next day as we flew to Bahir Dar. Luckily the hotel gave us a wake up call when we didn’t arrive and we got there on time with no problem.
Anna’s adventures 