The drive from our bush camp to Axum was surprisingly short. The dirt road turned into tarmac allowing us to drive the remaining 100 km in just two hours. When we checked into the room at 10am we found out that Michelle’s and my room was a single room featuring only one bed. After discussion with the hotel management a second bed was brought into the room. However, now there was barely space to open the door of the bathroom. The bed was also very instable so whenever I moved it made lots of noise and gave me the feeling of breaking down every second. However, this will do for the two nights here.

Due to the rearrangement of our room there were five strange people hanging around in our room. One of them was at the balcony having an endless conversation on his mobile phone. Since I wanted to have a shower I literally needed to kick them out of the room. Once everyone has left there were still some flip-flops in the room which I simply through out of the window into the courtyard of the hotel. Later on it turned out that these were complementary flip-flops which were provided by the hotel and upon check-out they wanted us to pay for them.

The water in the shower was freezing and as the people above our room started to have a shower as well there was water dripping down from the ceiling flooding our room. We spoke to the hotel management again and then a cleaning lady came to mop the floor.

After the adventures in our hotel room we were up for an adventure in the city. The first one was lunch in a very small local restaurant where we had a dish consisting of bread, beans and oil which was not very delicious but eatable. We also had some freshly prepared Mango juice which was very tasty. In total we only paid 20 Birr (1.20 USD) each.

In the afternoon Michelle, Kelly and I went around in town. We walked along the main street and visited a small market. The town is somewhat touristy since it used to be the capital of the Kingdom of Axum and today it’s still a religious centre visited by pilgrims. The main street features some handicraft and antiques shops. Our fellow traveller Marek is really into that stuff and bought lots of artefacts here. We are wondering how he will bring them through customs since some the pieces are not allowed for export.

We ended our city walk in a small park where a number of locals were hanging out. There was some nice African music and people were playing pool and having some soft drinks as we did.

In the late afternoon Michelle and I entertained us by watching a few episodes of “Little Britain” before we went out with a couple of people for dinner. The restaurant was nicely decorated but it took ages to get the food. My spaghetti dish was tasty but cold when served. This is Africa, no hurry at all :-)