I woke up in Axum this morning and went to see the sights. The first stop was the Queen of Sheeba's bath, with was really just a big water reservoir. Then we went to see a tri-lingual text which is written in Ge'ez, Sabaean and ancient Greek. The stone is kept in and old shed and guarded by a farmer, which I thought was quite strange. The stone unlocked the key to deciphering Sabeaen. I was fascinated and tried to recognise some of the Greek words.

We went back into the town and visited the Stela field, in which two giant granite obelisks are placed. They seemed bigger than the obelisks of Karnak, I'm now really interested in seeing the Egyptian ones again so I can compare them. We also visited some subterranean tombs, which were those of the old Axumite kings.I loved that, finally a bit of archaeology, I was in my element.

Our last stop on the tour was the Queen of Sheeba's palace, which really only the foundations survive. It actually reminded me a bit of Troy in its architecture, which was a little strange. After the palace we went back to the hotel and then some of us went out for lunch to a place called The Ark. The food was amazing and we went next door to the souvenir shop, we didn't last long, it was such a rip off. The guy in there attempted to charge me 3500 birr for one icon. I got two bigger than that in Addis for 450.

After lunch, a group of us went to the St. Mary of Zion church, where the supposed Ark of the Covenant is kept. It was really annoying, women weren't allowed in the main church, yet they failed to tell us that before we paid. I was so angry, again, rip off merchants! I did have a look inside the new church which was still quite impressive; it had one of the biggest domes I've ever seen.

I went for a walk with Greg and found the Jesus church, which was very colourful from the outside. I walked back to the hotel by myself, getting harassed by kids for money the entire way and shut myself in my room. I updated my diary and started writing some notes for the Egyptian leg of the trip, which I'm going to help out with a bit. I had really good spaghetti in the restaurant and went off to bed.