WhereIsSteve's Guestbook

Sounds awful!
Hey, Steve ... sounds like it's awful out there in all that sun although the temptation of Restaurant Benny Hill will surely be too much and you'll eventually succumb! As you'd expect, we have our fair share of rain, snow, rain and, for a change, some more rain. We occasionally get windy rain or snowy rain as well just to add a touch of variety but, as is traditional, rain is genreally featuring heavily at the moment putting everyone in that festive wintery mood that the great British public are so famed for. Pleased you had a good Christmas and are looking forward to a fun new year ... the question is, do you sneak along to Disco Boney M to see the new year in ... it must be tempting :-) Take care Nick

And finally ...
Turning *left* out of the hotel, Steve? Good plan ... ;-) Great 'and finally ...' write up. A good summary of a fascinating country, amazing culture, wonderfully welcoming people and an exciting future. I give it 5 years before we see them advertising their tourism on British TV. It's definitely a place to get to before it becomes too commercial! Top holiday, great photos, entertaining and informative write up ... looking forard to the next trip blogs! :-)

your guide on Gonder
Hi, his correct name is Getachew Alemu, what a star guy he is.

Empress Mentewab's Palace
It's probably just worth adding in an aside that the visit to the palace was a bit of an add on ... we were running ahead of schedule and decided a quick visit would be in order. The bus took a right onto a steep hill but before long, realised it wasn't going to make it so we decamped and slogged the rest of the way up the hill on foot. Passing through an ancient church compound (with a modern church in the middle which replaced the one destroyed by the Mahdists in the C19th), we came across Empress Mentewab's Palace. Empress Mentewab, to cut a long story short, was a commoner that one of the king's married and who acted as a power behind the throne. When her husband died, she ruled as regent for her son and, then when he died, tried to rule as regent for her grandson, much to the new queen's annoyance! She met with James Bruce, the first European to trace the source of the Nile and we saw his room and study where he stayed in the Palace, ultimately marrying one of the queen's daughters. It was a very atmospheric place and had large rooms, banqueting halls and so on ... the Queen seemed to upset everyone at some point sooner or later, including the local priests who she eventually tried to lord it over by inviting them to a banquet on the promise that none would leave to go to the toilet ... she then plied them with drinks and had them hopping around bursting for the loo to teach them a lesson about who was in charge! In the end, one of the priests asked her a question: "what is 100 x 100?" to which she replied "1000, of course." In Amharic, "1000 of course," is pronounced "shee, na awo", very similar to "sheena awo" (not sure of the spelling here) which also means, "piss all over the floor". With the answer he wanted from the queen, he promptly urinated on the banqueting floor, causing the queen to realise she'd been tricked and she then released the rest of the priests to answer the call of nature. Which seemed an appropriate precursor to our next trip to the brewery! ;-)

Gday blue or Eyup mi duck
Hi Steve - sound like you are having a very interesting time - so how do you say Hello Please and Thankyou to an Ethiopian?

The Name of the Queen of Sheba
From Wikipedia: "Known to the Ethiopian people as Makeda or Maqueda, this queen has been called a variety of names by different peoples in different times. To King Solomon of Israel she was the Queen of Sheba. In Islamic tradition she was Balqis or Balkis. By the Arabians, who say she came from the city of Sheba, also called Mareb, in Yemen or Arabia Felix. The Roman historian Josephus calls her Nicaule. She is thought to have been born on January 5, sometime in the 10th century BC." The restaurant at the hotel in Axum was called The Makeda Restaurant ...

Romantic Candlit dinners
Yep ... we came to Ethiopia for our honeymoon ... can't be doing with these dull 'lie on a beach' holidays where you read loads of books you could have read at home without forking out on a plane ticket! If you're going to go somewhere, make it interesting! Of course, the icing on the cake for us was having a romantic evening with the lovely Steve ... they even bought out candles when the electricity failed - what can I say, it was a special moment. You find out an awful lot about a person in those circumstances ... but not quite all. It wasn't until the next day that we discovered Steve's uncanny sense of direction ...

Missing, presumed dead ( drunk).
Oi! Where the Heck are you now? People keep asking after you. I presume you owe them money so I'm keeping schtoom. Please contact pnewton@hotmail.com as he either in dire need of analysis or too pleased with himself to be left un-harassed. Something about a wedding. Cheers! Jimminy Cricket

hi sir !
hi sir im finding it interesting reading your blog ive read quite a few now sounds like your really enjoying yourself. didnt no about your foot ! Hope you keep writting from Fay :)

I'm impressed!
I didn't have you down as a blogger, but you were obviously born to blog! I was surprised though that your first taste of injeera was noted as 'tastes ok' - you obviously didn't have the wet dishcloth version that we were greeted with. Anyway, enjoy the trip. Hope you like it as much as I did.

Travels
Hello, I have already sent you a message. Anyway, here it is again. Have a great hols in Ethiopia. Kam x