In order to help us get acquainted with the county, Eskinder lined up two guided museum tours in Addis Ababa. Many times over the next couple weeks we referred back to information gleaned from these tours. The day was a very valuable introduction to Ethiopia and helped us to better understand the things we saw and experienced later on.
At our first stop, the Ethiopian Natural History Museum, our tour guide was top-notch. He spoke excellent English and had tons of great information and stories for us. We learned so much about the culture, their history as a nation, and their religious heritage. 
It was mind boggling to realize how OLD some of the items on display were. This oil lamp made out of bronze was dated from before the 1st century BC. We saw many such ancient artifacts on display, as well as robes, thrones and weapons of war from their long lineage of kings in the Solomonic dynasty. If you are interested in some of the history we learned, you can read a short summary at this link.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menelik_l
Because our first exposure to Ethiopia was a bustling city with all the modern conveniences, we were rather puzzled when our tour guide announced that these were the Modern displays.
The things before us resembled implements on display in our museums depicting life a 100 years ago. In our heads, we attributed these items to people who must live miles from civilization. Little did we know that people just outside the confines of the city actually live and work using these most basic of tools.
Saving the best for last, we were ushered into a tiny room where we were presented with a replica of Lucy's bones, discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. She is an important discovery, according to proponents of evolution. We were told that we couldn't see Lucy's real bones because they were on tour in North America - although I read that normally the fossils are locked in a vault anyway. 
It was midday when we finished the tour. Our heads were full and we were beginning to fade. Since we still had one more museum to tour, we asked Eskinder if we could go somewhere for a quick reststop and beverage. He took us to a really nice little cafe set in beautiful gardens of lush vegetation. I did not know that fuchsia's can grow to be TREES! We were very grateful for the soda pops and a place to sit down for a few moments.
I have to laugh because out of 5 people carrying cameras, I have only a half dozen pictures from inside the second museum, the Insititue of Ethiopian Studies. I'm thinking were on on "information overload" at this point. There was only an hour left before it was scheduled to close for the day, so our tour was very abbreviated. Perhaps that was a blessing in disguise, as most of us were literally falling asleep standing up. We suspect our knowledgeable tour guide may have had some very interesting stories to tell, but unfortunately his English was hard to understand, and he was inclined to speak very rapidly. We did a lot of smiling and nodding and then tried to speed-read the long written explanations posted along the way. This museum is in an old palace, which was an interesting tour all on its own.
Outside the museum was an intriguing piece of art which just begged to be climbed. So we handed a couple cameras to Eskinder and positioned ourselves for our first group photo. We are missing one team member, Z who was "home" with a sick daughter.We had reservations booked for supper at an ethnic Ethiopian restaurant, but thankfully had an hour break to rest at the guest house and freshen up a bit. This first day isn't over yet!!!
