Our final two days in Ethiopia were spent back in the capital, Addis Ababa.  We flew in from Lalibela on a short flight, and arrived at our new, beautiful hotel, The Capital Hotel and Spa, around 3:00. 

We didn’t have much time to spare, because I had scheduled the Go Addis food tour for that evening.

We tossed our bags into the room, freshened up a bit, and then hit the street.  To our delight, our tour guide was Genet, the same woman who took us on the half-day sightseeing tour of Addis Ababa the week before. She is a great tour guide, and I was happy to see her. 

Esset Restaurant was not our first eatery on the tour; it was just a central meeting point. 

Once the group was assembled, we walked to our first restaurant, where Ganet explained the vegetarian dishes we would be sampling, along with a demonstration on how to use the injera to pick up and eat the food.  

We sampled a number of dishes, and they were all very tasty. 

The next restaurant, with the word “House” glaringly misspelled, was a fish restaurant, and everyone got their own individual big fish to sample. 

I don’t usually eat fish like this, i.e. with the bones still in them, and the eyes staring back at you, but when in Rome…

I have to admit it was yummy.

Next stop was Yilma, a place famous for their meat.  

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They butcher it right there in the restaurant. 

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The beef dish we had was fabulous.  It was called tibs, and it’s these small pieces of beef that are nicely spiced, with some pieces of bread mixed in, and then all covered with a thin piece of injera. We all sat around and scarfed it up with Ethopian beer.

Our last stop on the tour was a coffee house called Tiru.

We all gathered around a big table, where they roasted the coffee beans right on the table. 

There’s an herb called roo that the Ethiopians serve alongside the coffee.

 You dip the herb into the coffee and stir it around a bit, and it imparts a mild citrusy flavor to the coffee that many people like.  I don’t drink coffee, but I could smell the herb wafting from the cups of coffee, and it did smell pretty nice.

We all drank coffee and chatted (I had tea), said our goodbyes to Genet and to each other, and headed back.

For the next day we decided to revisit the Sholla Market. We spent the first half of the day there.

For the afternoon, I scheduled a cooking demonstration for Mark.

A local married couple, Daniel and Tigist would demonstrate how to cook a traditional Ethiopian dish, and how to pour the batter for injera bread.

We would then eat the meal with them in their home.

We each tried our hand at pouring the batter for the injera.

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We ate the meal in their dining room, and then were driven back to the hotel. We got back to the hotel and packed up our stuff for our flight to Nairobi.  I was psyched, because we were finally going to do an activity that I’d wanted to do all my life:  a safari!!

CONTINUE TO PART 11 – NAIROBI SAFARI