Articles from this Category
12 January 2008
At about 1900 last night I checked with the hotel staff as to whether he had bought our tickets to Woldia (for this morning’s 0600 departure). He had said he’d buy them at 1730 last night upon the arrival of the bus that would overnight here in Lalibela. He had offered to make the arrangement […]
11 January 2008
Lalibela which is famous for the rock-hewn churches, ie. churches carved into the rock. Somewhat like Petra in Jordan except that there are some that are monolithic ie. rather than being carved into rock-faces, they are free-standing. We started at the Northern Group. The most impressive is St George’s. Visitors and worshippers descend through a […]
10 January 2008
The plan today was to go for an excursion to Yeremhana Kristos, a monastery of about 1000 years. But we had some time to kill beforehand so took a wander to some of the churches. A ticket was required and we duly paid for it even though it wasn’t meant to be a long visit […]
9 January 2008
Yesterday was a lazy day in Addis during which we went to Entoto Market on the hills. And we relaxed, which is just as well because we had an early morning start today, waking up at 0445. Our flight to Lalibela departing at 0710 was a same-plane three-sector service on a Fokker 50 via Bahir […]
7 January 2008
After breakfast, we took a taxi to St George Cathedral. Its namesake is the protector of Ethiopia, the second Christian country in the world. He slayed the dragon too. Admission was by ticket which included admission to the adjacent Cathedral museum (guide inclusive and compulsory). After a mildly informative but rushed tour of both places, […]
6 January 2008
Today Marie and I started our adventure in Africa. Ethiopia specifically. The Ethiopian Airlines 737 took us from Sana’a departing at 1645 and arriving at Addis Ababa at 1945 (if it had been on time). There was a stop en route at Djibouti that was meant to be for an hour, but it took a […]
5 January 2008
Today I detected a schedule change in our Ethiopian Airlines flights. We’re due to fly out to Addis Ababa tomorrow. But the change affected our final flight from Addis back to Sana’a. We would now be returning to Sana’a two days earlier on 25 Jan rather than 27 Jan. I had been worried about being […]
25 December 2007
Merry Christmas! And Alhamdulillah, the street are finally clean … the street cleaners seem to have had 7 days off for Eid. But the bakery is still closed 🙁 Being Christmas, I decided to cook rendang for dinner and inviting some friends. Rendang is of course the dry beef curry popular in Malaysia-Indonesia. Mmmmm. Out of necessity […]
23 December 2007
Many shops are still closed. We can’t get a good choice of fruits or vegetables, we have to go further for water, drinks or yoghurt. And our next-door bakery is closed; fresh Yemeni bread is good enough to get out of bed for. Many restaurants, eateries and internet places are closed too. To make matters […]
19 December 2007
Today, being Eid, we got invited to our teacher’s (Adnan) house. We were treated to a Yemeni lunch … Marie even ate her friend the goat! Life is still very traditional in Yemen … his wife did not join us for lunch because of my presence as a non-related male … if it had been […]