Today we leave to Ethiopia!

Today is the big day! We leave to Ethiopia!

Our flight leaves from Malpensa and, as we have been doing it for some time now, we decide to go to the airport by our car.

we leave from home a little early, today is a working day and you never know how the traffic on the A8 Milano Varese could be.

Fortunately we do not find much traffic and in a short time we arrive at Malpensa, we park in our favorite parking lot and go to the airport by their shuttle.

The first thing we do is checking-in, so we get rid of the bags and go through the controls immediately, even if there aren't many people, we prefer to go immediately to the transit area.

Once we arrive in the transit area we go to the Motta Bar to have breakfast, we have some time before boarding, so we remain here and we relax while waiting.

When it is just before boarding, we head towards our gate and wait for them to start letting passengers board the plane; this time we don't fly in business but in economy class, so we have to wait, on the other hand it seemed a waste to pay so much for a few hours of flight, we hope to have a good flight.

Our flight takes off at 10.30am but it is not a direct flight, we stop over in Istanbul, where we will have to wait for about 4 hours.

The first part of the flight passes in an instant, in fact it is only 2 hours and 20 minutes.

We land in Istanbul and, to pass the time, we take a ride around the airport; we had lunch on board so we are not hungry, but we are looking for a place to have a drink, maybe a coffee and then to decide how to spend this time.

We are not at the Ataturk but at the new airport that opened less than a year ago; it is really immense!

We have read conflicting opinions about this airport, there are those who say that it is too far from Istanbul, in this case we do not care because we are in transit, but in fact it is more than an hour's drive from the city.

But it is very beautiful, they have not spared any expense even though I believe it needs some time to get up to speed and above all to optimize these immense spaces; there is an immense reproduction of the Istanbul Bazaar where they sell everything; how not to be tempted by Turkish sweets?

At 6.30 pm our boarding is planned to Addis Abeba, so we head towards our gate and, shortly after, we get on the plane.

I do not know how many kilometers we have walked inside the airport and we have not seen it all, well if they wanted a spacious airport I would say that they succeeded!

We take off in perfect time and, once we have reached altitude, we have dinner that is not bad at all; after dinner we would like to watch a movie but we are a little tired and we fall asleep.

We wake up that the plane has already started the descent and shortly after we land at the Bole airport in Addis Abeba, it is 11.15 pm.

We have landed other times at this airport and we know it quite well, both the old part and the new part; but, until now, we have always only made a stopover to continue our journey; this is the first time instead that we visit Ethiopiaand therefore it is also the first time that we will leave the transit area and the airport.

Welcome to Ethiopia to us!