Our flight MS 851 from Cairo to Addis Ababa landed around 3:15 AM. The airport was quiet and there weren’t too many passengers around. We were able to access the Star Alliance Gold Lounge thanks to my United MileagePlus Gold. There was also a different Ethiopian Airlines Cloud Nine Lounge, which was only for business class passengers on Ethiopian Airlines. It was still the middle of the night so we found some comfortable chairs and tried to get some sleep. Around 7:00 AM, we had some breakfast. Our flight ET 847 to Cape Town was at 8:30 AM.
This was our first time on Ethiopian Airlines and I was curious how the experience would be.
The most exciting part of this flight for me was that we were going to cross the equator for the first time.
Lunch was served around noon as we traversed the African continent north to south.
We landed at Cape Town around 2:15 PM and parked next to a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul.
We cleared immigration and picked up our bags and made our way out of the airport. I was a little skeptical about taking a taxi from the airport so we decided to take the MyCiTi bus from Cape Town International Airport to the Civic Centre bus terminus. This would also mean that we would have to walk for about 1 km to our hotel. We had contacted the hotel earlier and the staff had been very helpful to provide us with the letter confirming the accommodation, which we had needed for our visa application.
I had booked a standard double room from hotels.com and specifically selected ensuite bathroom. However, upon arrival and check-in, they told us that all the ensuite rooms were already occupied and also that our hotels.com reservation didn’t specifically mention it. Anyway it was too late to do anything about it then so we went ahead. The room itself was nice and we had a window which was overlooking the road below, but we were quite high up, so there was no issue of noise etc.
We relaxed for a bit and then went out for a stroll. We walked on Long Street looking around at the stores, bars and restaurants. Then we went to see the Green Market Square.
We walked around Green Market Square for a while and then we decided to go to The Diplomatic Bar and Restaurant to have some African food for dinner. The food was nice and tasty and very different from all the other cuisines we had tried so far. We enjoyed it.
After dinner we walked back to the hotel, which was just around the corner and called it a day because we had a long day planned the next day.
🚍 MyCiTi Airport Service
🛏️ HomeBase Cape Town Backpackers
🍽️ The Diplomatic Bar and Restaurant