Axum, Ethiopia

Had another good breakfast at Lodge du Chateau and caught their airport shuttle for our flight at 9:15am to Gondar. The flight was full, as it flew via Lalibela where everyone except us and one other passenger disembarked.

In Axum, our hotel sent a driver for airport pickup, which made it 3-for-3 for airport pickups this trip. Seeing as we had never had a hotel pickup actually show up at the airport in our lifetime prior to this trip, we were pleasantly surprised.

The weather was very comfortable in Axum - a high of 22C and sunny.

We checked into the Consolar Hotel (that's how they spell it), we were the only guests in the hotel, which always feels weird to us.

Took a bajaj to an LP recommended restaurant for lunch. It was good, but again weird being the only people.

We walked into the centre to buy our entrance ticket to the ruins, except the ticket office was under construction. So we walked towards the ruins
stopping for a coffee ceremony which I suppose we needed to do once as tourists on this trip. The coffee wasn't particularly good - it's much better in the local restaurants.

Turns out you can buy the entrance ticket at the gate, unlike what the guide books said. So we explored around the Northern Stelae field. It was pretty cool to see, the stelae are 33m + tall, one of the tallest single pieces of stone erected in the world.

There's also many more stelae laying buried on the site, waiting discovery by archeologists. It reminded us a bit of Jordan - there's lots of history but not much money.

We then visited the St Mary of Zion Churches. The churches are nice on the outside (not very photogenic inside). In between the churches is a building that Ethiopians believe houses the Ark of the Covenant. It's heavily guarded and tourists are warned if you accidentally walk towards it (as happened to me).

On the way back home we souvenir shopped - Axum is one of the better places for souvenirs in northern Ethiopia. Bought a couple large-ish items that we'll have to lug around back to Addis.

We had dinner at our hotel, supposedly one of the better places to eat in Axum, but it was nothing special.