Our Home for the Week

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I remember attempting to stay in a hotel in Niagara Falls with my parents. After seeing the second cockroach, Mom decided it was time to leave and we found another place to stay. After hearing people’s description of the hotel we where we were staying in Addis, I was anticipating said Niagara Falls hotel that we didn’t stay in to be a step up.

It wasn’t.

The Union Hotel Apartment is a very nice facility. It’s no Hilton. But it doesn’t pretend to be, either. It’s probably on par with Motel 6. Of course, there were a few drawbacks. Like the bed. While HUGE, it was basically just the box springs. So it was rather firm. But sleeping on top of a few comforters certainly helped in the comfort department.

Our shower didn’t have a curtain. So you either had to take a bath or do whatever you could to try not to get water all over the place. Fortunately, there was a drain in the middle of the bathroom floor. Water would eventually find its way down the drain. The yellow container hanging from the wall on the left-hand side of the picture is the water heater. They asked that when we weren’t using the water heater that we unplug it to prevent frying the system. Unfortunately, when we unplugged it the Wednesday before we flew home, the entire outlet came out of the wall. No more hot water for us.

The room also included a spare bed. This wound up being quite useful when one of us was sick and didn’t feel right sleeping close to Mihret. An added bonus to the extra bed: it did have a mattress and was very, very soft. It might have been too soft. Yes, we felt kinda like Goldilocks with the beds being too firm and too soft. Never really found one that was just right though. But that’s more than fine. It’s much better than sleeping on the Therm-a-Rest on a rocky ground!

Although we knew Mihret wouldn’t sleep in the spare bed, we still had to decorate it for her in anticipation of her arrival. One of the first toys she really latched on to was the elephant blanket. Not for something to hug, but as a tool to play Peek-a-Boo. She loves Peek-a-Boo!

Oh yeah – did I mention that Addis is at an elevation of approximately 7600 feet at its lowest point? I didn’t really notice that until I climbed the steps to our room for the first time. We were on the third floor and I could definitely tell we were at a higher elevation. All of us in our travel group could because we were sucking wind by the time we reached our rooms.

Here’s the view from our third-floor hotel room/apartment…

The hotel staff was amazing! What the facility lacked in amenities, it certainly made up for it in their hospitality. They loved playing with everyone’s kids and some of the ladies even gave impromptu hair-care training sessions for the moms. They also hosted a coffee ceremony for us shortly before we left for the airport – but I’m getting ahead of myself. More about the coffee ceremonies later.

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Matt Todd

Howdy. I'm Matt. My wife, Christy, and I have four kids and two dogs, I'm passionate about orphan care. I'm a die-hard fan of the Evansville Aces, the Indiana Hoosiers, and Star Wars. I'm trying to live life by the Todd family motto: "It behooves us to live!"
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