Long layover in Addis Ababa

An all day layover in Addis Ababa?  Funny enough, this layover option has come up for us numerous times.  Since we use airline miles for most of our international trips, and we sometimes don't book far enough advance, there are often limited options for flights at the lowest mileage trade-in.  It's come up as an option coming home from Thailand and coming home from the Philippines and both times we reconfigured our trip so we could avoid the long layover and the city entirely.  Why avoid Addis?  Well, I'll be honest.  From the quick research I had done in the past, Addis didn't seem like a city I was dying to go to, and I was a little intimidated about trying to spend a full day there.  There didn't seem to be much to see and it didn't seem like the most tourist friendly city and I was honestly just a little overwhelmed by the idea of it.  For this trip though, the only option home from Seoul (at the mileage point we wanted) was the long layover in Addis so it was either skip Seoul, or go to Addis.  We decided to finally go to Addis.  We had a 14 hr. layover and because that was a forced layover through Ethiopian Airlines, we were entitled to a free hotel room and a free transit visa so at least we wouldn't have to pay for that.  We ended up not even going to our free hotel after all and didn't have a problem spending the day in Addis.  Luckily, we found a tour group called GoAddis (that incidentally also was feature in an epsiode of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown) and they took great care of us!

We signed up for a half day tour with Go Addis and since it was an off-peak time, it was just the two of us, one other guy (European dude), the tour guide, and the driver.  Our tour guide was super nice and friendly and took us to some great places!

First, we went to Shola Market where they sold all types of goods and spices.  It was really neat going there with our guide because our guide was friendly with the vendors and was able to really show us things up close.  It also helped that he would keep any aggressive salespeople at bay.

 

 

Let's Get Cooking!

Today we started the day by checking out of our riad and leaving the medina!  It's interesting because when you're in the medina, it's like you're in another world and you get to experience Marrakesh how it traditionally is.  However, the second your leave the medina walls, you're in a normal, modernish city.  There are Starbucks, McDonalds, cars, congested streets, and people going to and from work.  As a tourist, I don't really see why you would want to spend much time outside of the medina as it is a city but not a particularly interesting one.  Anyways, today we made a pit stop before going to the airport.  We took a Moroccan cooking class at the Amal Women's Training Center.  This place is really cool!  It is a training center to help disenfranchised women (like single mothers) train for jobs in the hospitality/hotel industry by teaching them how to cook, be a waitress, clean, etc. so they can get a job in a local riad.  The women practice cooking and they sell the food to local schools for their lunch and there's even a restaurant in the city that allow the women to practice what they're learning.  We didn't get a chance to go to the restaurant but by taking a cooking class here, the profits offset the costs to run the place.  It was originally started by a Swiss non-profit who loaned the Amal Center money to get them up and running.  Fortunately, the loan was paid back in full and now they're a self-sustaining center.

 

Seaside at Essaouira

This morning we decided to get out of Marrakesh and go on a day trip.  I had read online that Essaouira was a cool little beach town and it wasn't too far out of the way so we decided to check it out.  Most of the way there was just open, flat land.  However, on the route we passed a bunch of argan trees which produce nuts that make argan oil (the same oil in hair and beauty products).  The craziest thing about these argan trees is that these goats like to hang out in them.  They're not put in the tree by anyone or anything, they just like to climb up there and... hang out?!  It was pretty silly looking!

About half way through we stopped at an argan oil cooperative where these local woman help create products from the argan tree.  It was pretty neat because you could see them grind up the argan nuts to get all the oil out to make various food and cosmetic products.

After that, we pressed on to Essaouira.  It was a cute but sleepy little seaside down where there was a small beach and some cute cafes, restaurants, and shops.  We decided to eat a seafood lunch before walking around and taking pictures and exploring the little shops.

Getting Lost in the Souks

We were up bright eyed and bushy tailed to get a start on the day and this city.  However, last night, I was awoken by some definitely unexpected but beautiful singing!  I think it was some local Muslims singing their morning prayers (pardon my ignorance of whatever it is actually called) but it was so loud but pretty.  It felt like the entire town was singing together.  Definitely a fun experience of being in a riad in the medina rather than a big hotel chain outside of the walls but it was really cool!  I was actually smiling from being woken up in the middle of the night!

 Anyways, the main appeal of coming to Marakkech was the souks.  The souks are basically the rows and rows of shops selling all kinds of fun stuff.  The medina doesn't have any real roads/cars but rather so many little alleys and walkways that only accommodate foot traffic or a small moped.  Each of these stalls in the souks sell are kinds of stuff like pottery, leather shoes, fun ceramic tiles/mosaics.  The alleys are like a maze and since there are no streets or signs or anything, you can easily get lost.  Luckily for us, I wanted to!  It was such a great time and everything looked incredible.  Will said he felt like he was on an old movie set and it was true.  So neat!  I especially loved all the Moroccan metal lamps but unfortunately that wasn't going to fit into our luggage.  We lucked out with the most amazing weather too!

 

       

Marrakech or Marrakesh?

I follow travel deal sites all the time but usually all of the good deals are during the school year which is one of the reasons a teacher schedule can stink.  While I do have holidays and the summer off, those times are usually the most expensive and the hottest times of year to travel.  Finally though, an amazing travel deal worked out for us!  Will and I aren't super big into Thanksgiving so the holiday break, plus two personal days, wrapped around two weekends gave us over a week to head to Paris!

Being as we've both been to Paris before, we realized that maybe we didn't need such a long time there.  We brainstormed cheap flights from Paris and my French class experience made me think of Morocco and BINGO, we had a side trip!  Flights to Marrakech were cheap from Paris and Morocco was always been interesting to me so it was an easy decision.

Today was a travel day.  We originally got our deal to Paris ($430 roundtrip! And on AirFrance who had the most chic safety video and macarons for dessert!) as roundtrip from DC so today we flew to Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport and then took a bus to the Orly airport to catch our flight to Marrakech.  While at the airport, we got snacks from a little convenience store and even though it was a tiny store, their bread was fresh and delicious and paired with proscuitto and brie, made for a great airport snack!

It was just a 2 hour flight and we had arrived in Marrakech!  We got picked up by a driver from our hotel because we had read that it's pretty much impossible to find hotels from inside the Medina because they can only drop you off so far in as there are not really roads within the medina walls.  What we read was right!  If we did not have a driver to follow, we would've never found our hotel.

Love from Cairo

  

Will has always wanted to go to Egypt, like always.  And I've always wanted to go too but we've never quite found the right time.  Right after we got married the whole Arab Spring happened and Egypt hasn't quite made the news for such position reasons.  While we both generally think the media overhypes threats around the world, we also keep in mind that there have been cases when a random photographer or tourist get held as hostages and while the US is trying to bail them out, everyone else is thinking, "You just had to go there, huh?"  So yea, we never want to be those people so we've passed on Egypt many times before.  However, it didn't look like Egypt was going to be getting any better any time soon and from people I spoke to and the research I did online, it was starting to get less risky to go.  In researching all of the destinations we could go to with our credit card miles, we found that a lot of flights from Thailand to London naturally had a layover in Cairo.  This seemed like the perfect compromise. While most of the layovers were only about 4 hours, I worked it out with our United/EgyptAir points that we could extend the layover so it would be a full day (6am-6pm) without any additional costs!  It was perfect because while we didn't feel quite comfortable staying in Egypt for an extensive time on our own, a full day tour of Cairo was exactly what we needed to last us until that area got better and we could come back for a longer trip.  Cairo is small, all of the main destinations are a close proximity of each other, and we could knock out all the big attractions!  Since Cairo was a little intimidating, we decided to hire a tour company or something.  There were a bunch of companies that specialized in layover tours that picked you up and dropped you off at the airport but ultimately we decided on Egyptian Sidekick.  Egyptian Sidekick actual has an amazing premise.  Rather than being on a group tour with lots of stops at tourist trap stores you don't even want to go to, you're charged one flat rate for a half day or an entire day and you get to go where you want.  We did the full day which was $140 for the both of us and we got picked up at the airport by our private driver.  Along with him, we had a local Egyptian University student who spoke perfect English who functioned as our "sidekick": tour guide, negotiator, and general companion for the day.   It was amazing because we were able to go wherever we wanted and since we had a driver and a separate guide, the driver was able to just drop us off and we didn't have to worry about parking or waiting or anything of that and then later he would be back to pick us up wherever our guide told him to meet us.  While there was a slight debacle in meeting our driver at the airport (the reopening of the Suez Canal caused a ton of traffic and so he wasn't there when we arrived, and that was a mess), we got to see a lot in one day.  Here's a picture of Tahrir Square, the main meeting point for all of the demonstrations.