Rwanda Recap - Day 1-2

We're finally off to the airport. All the suitable items necessary for African travel have been procured and packed. Liz did most (I mean all) of the research on our flights and said we could save over $1,000 if we were willing to fly Ethiopian Airlines. I'm like, "They have an airline? Is it some kind of bi-wing prop plane? Are their planes built in Russia?"

Yes, no and no. Ends up they are actually nice Boeing jets. We're to fly from IAD, stop in Rome to refuel only, and then to Addis Ababa. Ethiopian then will put us in a hotel for the night and fly us to Kigali via Nairobi in the morning. Pretty typical flight schedule.

Dave drops us off at the airport and we go into the terminal looking for the Ehiopian Airlines desk. None to be found. We have to go around the back side of the ticketing booths in the farthest corner of the terminal we see about 10 guys that look like this. No kidding, they each had an awesome staff and medallion. Liz, I think we found the right airline.

We were a little concerned about how the hotel would work on the other end. The airline did say that they would take care of it, but it was difficult for us to understand their accent. Again, as we check in we ask the agent. "So how do we get to the hotel in Addis?" His response? "It's OK, the agent will take care of everything on the other side." Hmmm...we'll go on faith on that one.

The flight was packed but we had bulkhead seats. Thank goodness. It was about 8 hours to Rome and another 6 to Addis. I had two pleasant surprises. First, the food was pretty good and wine was palatable. As Liz doesn't really eat or drink that much, I had plenty of both. Second, they had 4 movies to choose from. I saw the Marine, the new Charlotte's Web, the one where Ben Stiller works in a Museum and stuff comes alive, and the new Bond flick. They were at least a little entertaining. Charlotte's Web did make me cry, but I had been cramped in a plane for 12 hours at that point with plenty of wine to soften me up.

Rome was only for one hour and we couldn't leave the plane. I took this photo from my seat.

Not exactly the Coliseum, but at least they did clean the lavatories and bring on more food and wine.

We did eventually get to Addis, and sure enough, the agent did take care of us and we were whisked off to the Queen of Sheba hotel in a bus. Not a bad place. Satellite TV and a private bath with hot water with free dinner and breakfast. We had to get up at 5:00am the next morning in order to catch the shuttle back to the airport for our next flight, so we didn't see much. I was too tired for much activity anyway. But we did see a couple guys herding about 20 cows down the middle of a busy downtown street in the morning. Breakfast was excellent and we were off to the airport. All of us...in this tiny bus.


Then we realized why they took us there so early. It was so we could shop at the Addis duty free mall for about 3 hours before our flight. Whatever, they had some nice stuff and we drank cokes at the cafe. The flight to Kigali was uneventful and we arrived on time sometime in the early afternoon on Day 3 of the trip. Here's a shot I took from the gate at the Addis airport.