Sarbet, whose name literally means ‘grass house’ is a charming neighborhood just outside the main city area. Although it used to be considered mainly a residential area, it has quickly become a popular expat hang out due to its close location to the African Union, the large International Evangelical Church, and the Canadian Embassy.

Accommodation

Sarbet is considered a desirable place to live by many expats because of the secluded street of homes located behind the Canadian Embassy. It’s one of the few places within the city that has a decent amounts of trees and flowers. Houses in the area can be a bit expensive with most costing between 30,000 and 40,000 Birr a month. However, the homes usually have several bedrooms and bathrooms and are surrounded by a garden area and secure fencing.

If you’re a single person and aren’t looking for a fancy place to live, you can find a simple one bed room apartment for around 3000 Birr a month.

For those staying only a short time, there is one hotel in the area called King’s Hotel. It’s located across from the International Evangelical Church (IEC) and is know for its great service and free wifi. Most rooms cost between $50-65 a night.

Shopping

Sarbet isn’t known for being a great shopping destination, however, there are a few stores in the area. Most of them are found inside Adams Pavilion which is the large building beside the roundabout. One of the most popular stores you can find there is the international best selling brand, sole Rebels. Adam’s Pavilion also has several ATMS in the lobby.

Piñata, considered the best part supply store in Addis, is located in Sarbet too near King’s Hotel. It has everything you need for your next celebration including custom made piñatas.

There are also two grocery stores in the area that are both known for carrying a decent amount of Western food brands. The first is Novis Supermarket which is located next to King’s Hotel. The second is Fantu Supermarket which is after the roundabout on the way to Karl’s square.

Many people also enjoy shopping at the NGO bizarre which is held at IEC the last Saturday of every morning from 9am-11:30am. The vendors sell all types of food, crafts, and artisan designs.

Transportation

Getting to and around Sarbet is easy. Mini-buses from Mekanissa, Mexico, and Gabrielle all pass through the area, and any contract taxi would be familiar with getting there as well.

You can also find a bus out of Sarbet by waiting at any of the main bus station areas which are located on both sides before and after the overpass. You can also usually find a ride by waiting outside the Canadian Embassy or Munich German Bakery and Cafe. Contract taxis are also prevalent and will stop just about anywhere in the area.

The only thing you must keep in mind though is that because there are no clubs or bars in Sarbet, transportation shuts down early. After 9pm, it will become difficult to find a ride home.

Restaurants & Cafes

Sarbet offers lots of choices for cafes and restaurants. Most of them only serve Western food though so you will probably be out of luck if you’re craving injera.

• Kaldi’s – This popular chain cafe is always a popular meeting place and is located in Adam’s Pavillion. It’s quite loud here so if you need some peace and quiet, it’s better you look elsewhere.
• Tomoca – This is both a cafe and an art gallery. On warm days they also open up their roof top for those wanting some sunshine.
• Bella’s – Many choose this place for its selection of cakes. They also serve coffee, tea, and other quick bites.
• Efoye – Located next to King’s hotel, this restaurant has some of the best pizza and sandwiches in town. They also offer a soup of the day and several vegetarian meal options. The place is quite small and their sign is written only in Amharic so it’s quite easy to miss, however, it’s worth hunting down because the food is amazing.
• Garden Paradise Restaurant and Bar – Located in Adam’s Pavillion, this restaurant has several different Western food dishes as well as big screen tv’s which they turn on for football matches.
• Munich German Bakery & Cafe – This cafe offers both lunch and dinner options, although it is mostly known for fresh baked bread and touch of German influence. It’s located across the street from the Canadian Embassy.

Haya Hulet is one of the areas of Addis that is getting a complete construction overhaul. With the new LRT being built that will pass straight through the neighbourhood and repairs underway to improve the old roads, Haya Hulet can be an extremely overwhelming area to go for a walk.

Located between Urael and Megenagna, Haya Hulet can a very busy place with all its shops and stores.

Accommodation

With the rent of a four bedroom nice old house with hardwood floors being anywhere from $1,250 USD and up, living in Haya Hulet is not as cheap as it used to be. The rent of an unfurnished one bedroom space in a shared compound would go for a minimum of $450 per month.

In November 2014, I was looking for a house and was surprised to find out that I couldn’t find a two bedroom place for less than $600 unless the house was unfurnished or the compound was shared with the landlord.

Regarding shared housing, I know of someone who lives with three housemates in an old big house and the rent per month is $300 per person. Prices have surely gone up a lot within the past few years for Haya Hulet’s residents and will definitely go up even more once the railway and the roads are finished.

Shopping

If you are looking to buy some clothes, you are in heaven. Everything from fake Louis Vuitton Chinese copies to nice and affordable European and American brands are all there. Especially the street that stretches from Haya Hulet out to Bole Medhanealem is full of these stores.

There are also two supermarkets just a couple of hundred meters away from each other by Zerihun Building. You can find most of the stuff you need between these two supermarkets. For other small things there are always plenty of those small shops that you can find everywhere in Addis.

There is also a big duty free store but it is only for those who have the duty free status, people who work for embassies and NGOs.

Recreation

There isn’t much to do when it comes to recreational activities in Haya Hulet but it is close to Bole and Megenagna so you can always go to these neighborhoods to find something you cannot find in Haya Hulet. There are of course gyms that are open for membership all year round in most of the hotels including Capital Hotel and Axum Hotel. Capital Hotel also has a swimming pool and there is soon going to be a full spa as well.

Restaurants & Cafes

There are a lot of those copy cafes with nothing to differentiate then from the rest. The ubiquitous all coffee, tea, cake and soda menu. But that is what Haya Hulet is all about. A lot of same things, everywhere. If you want just a coffee all you have to do is basically walk in to the next café you see.

• Yeshi Buna – Located just at the end of Chechnya road, Yeshi Buna is known for its 24 hour service and delicious Ethiopian food. It is common to see this place packed at 4 and 5 in the morning since people like to make a stop there for a quick bite after a heavy night of partying.
• Zebra Grill – One of the well-known and old restaurants of Haya Hulet, Zebra grill is known for its selection of European dishes (Chicken being their specialty) since the rest of the restaurants mostly just serve Ethiopian.
• Pizza Corner – Just across the street from Yeshi Buna, Pizza corner is one of the newest additions to the restaurants of Haya Hulet. They have a selection of nice dishes and combos of your choice.
  Right next door, there’s an ice cream place that serves different flavors of ice cream and shakes. But what they are most known for is obviously their pizza. I’d recommend it.
• Elsa Restaurant – All you’ll find here to eat is Ethiopian. ‘Qurt’ and ‘Kitfo’ which are both raw meat dishes, is what you will most likely to see people ordering since they are known for their good quality meat. They have a variety of Ethiopian dishes on the menu to choose from so it might be better to go there with an Ethiopian the first time.

Nightlife

Just like the cafes, there are loads small bars that are all quite similar to each other. Whatever you can find in one bar, you can likely find in the other. Unless you are shopping for prostitutes, just jumping in to one small bar gives you the experience of all.

But then there is Tobia, Known for their ‘Tej’ which is honey wine, and their Ethiopian dishes. Even though it cannot be classified under nightlife because it closes down at 10pm, a lot of nights start there since Tej has the tendency to make people go merry.

And then there is Road Runner where people like to go and get beers sitting around the fire. It had a nice atmosphere and friendly people both times I went there.

• Fiesta – A place with two bars on one floor, with the small one as the VIP, Fiesta is like the bars you find in Bole. It has that lounge-y look and a DJ that loves to play either dance or Tigrigna music. Which can be a bit of a weird mix. But all in all it is a fun place to hang with a hookah on your table.

Positioned right around the center of Addis, Kazanchis is one of the oldest parts of town. Kazanchis was one of the places where our fathers went for a little jamboree. Stretching from about four kilometers from the palace down to Urael church, Kazanchis still reflects the soon to-be-forgotten swinging jazz days of Addis. It’s an area that still refuses to be quiet at night.

After decades of longing for a piece of Kazanchis, investors and the Richie Rich have finally got to it. Sadly, it’s changing quickly and in fewer than 10 years from now, there will likely be only hotels and mixed use buildings that tell no story of how things use to be.

Accommodation

Since you can find those 60-year-old, wooden-floored houses hidden behind all the cafes and bars, renting a house can be a bit cheaper than in the other, more central, parts of town. I’ve seen two- and three-bedroom houses that are being rented out for no more than $600 USD a month.

With all of the ongoing construction in Kazanchis, more and more apartment buildings are popping up and adding new options to the choice of housing. The rent for a two bedroom apartment on one of these newly built buildings would be somewhere from $650 to $800 USD based on whether the apartment is furnished or not.

Kazanchis is now also the home 4 and 5 star hotels so if you are in Addis just for a few days, there is that option of spending more than a hundred dollars a night.

Shopping

Kazanchis is a place where you can get plenty of same item vendors that inexplicably seem to cluster close together. There is an abundance of stationary shops in Kazanchis and also quite a few shops for computer accessories. You can also find a few boutiques along the main road but that’s about it. Kazanchis is not a shopping haven.

Restaurants & Cafes

There are a lot of small local cafes and restaurants where you can stuff your face with $2 meals so it is simply awesome for the non-snobbish. But the small, cheap restaurants mostly only serve Ethiopian dishes. There are also some nice restaurants where you can find more expensive European fare.

• Lime Tree – With the UN right behind it, Lime tree can get pretty busy around lunch time. It’s a nice, small place with good service. And for the lemonade crazed, they have a pay for one and have unlimited lemonade rules. So go crazy.
• Kabana – Opened no longer than a year ago, Kabana is the new addition to those who crave Caribbean. Their menu includes delicious Caribbean dishes like oxtails and jerk chicken. The owner is mostly there and super nice so if you’re not happy with what’s on your plate, you should not hesitate to send it back.
• Romina – Once the party spot of Kazanchis, Romina has now turned to a decent restaurant with a decent menu. The food is decent and slightly cheaper compared to the other nicer restaurants in that area too. There’s a whole lot of ‘decent’ at Romina!

Nightlife

If you are out for a fun night involving alcohol and some boogie boogie there are a couple of nice places in Kazanchis that you can go to. Plus there are heaps of those small local bars with extremely loud music and prostitutes that some might prefer to go to.

• Liquid Lounge – Liquid is a nicely designed lounge in the heart of Kazanchis. They have a DJ playing dance music throughout the week but it is only packed on the weekends. Which is good for the ones who go there not for the dancing but for a tête-à-tête with a few drinks and hookah.
• Club Voltage – This club is lcoated inside the Intercontinental Addis Hotel. Even though they have they have nice couches, a big dance floor and a DJ, they still have not managed to fill the dance floor. But they do host some fun parties and events there every now and then.
• Fendika – Fendika is a small traditional restaurant that has been around for a long time. The owner is a renowned traditional dancer and is still one of the performers there. It is usually packed with expats and diaspora who are there to see these performances while sipping on Tej (honey wine). The owner also invites old and somewhat forgotten Ethiopian musicians to Fendika and gets them to perform for his audience.

The Old Airport area of Addis Ababa is where the rich reside. Once a desolate and an undesirable part of town to live in, Old Airport has completely went through a major transformation over the past two decades. It is now full of embassies, embassy residences, and the international community school.

Old airport is located in between Sarbet and Tor-Hailoch and Mekanissa.

Accommodation

After the sudden rise to fame of Old Airport as a wonderful neighborhood to live in, the prices of apartments and houses have skyrocketed. The cheapest rent I’ve heard of in that area is a tiny studio apartment in a shared building for $300 USD per month. To rent an unfurnished two bedroom apartment close to Victory Road, be prepared to pay close to a thousand dollars a month. It is the same with houses, the rent for a small townhouse with two bedrooms is also a little shy of a thousand dollars in Old Airport.

And just like most expensive areas in Addis, the most sensible way to shelter oneself is to find a shared house or apartment.

Shopping

You can find a few shops where you will be able to shop for most of the things you need to get through the month within a few hundred meter stretch along Victory Road. Fantu and Shoa supermarkets provide the residents of Old Airport with most of their groceries. There’s a flower shop just opposite ICS on Victory Road if that’s your thing.

Old Airport also has a Home Depot-style place. It’s a huge store and has heaps of different types of wares you can choose from. Lafto Mall where it is full of shops and stands where you can shop for different sorts of things from clothes to electronics.

Recreation

Compared to most of Addis, Old airport offers the most types of recreational activities in one area. Just at Lafto Mall you can find a gym and a swimming pool, so there goes your Sunday. There’s also a gym on the Adam’s Pavilion building for a reasonable membership fee.

Or if pumping iron isn’t your thing and you want a more relaxed sporting experience, there’s the golf club up the ring road and the bowling alley inside Lafto Mall. The golf club is a nice place to go on your weekends to shoot some golf balls and relax. They have membership for those who want to go regularly but anyone can go there, rent a set, and play at any time. The bowling alley inside Lafto Mall is the better one of the only two in town. It has a bar inside to make the experience of tossing heavy balls down a lane a bit more tolerable.

Restaurants & Cafes

If you live in Old Airport, you can find both very nice restaurants and local tibs places without breaking a sweat. Everything is within a few minutes walk from your home especially if you live along Victory Road.

• Tivoli – Mostly known for their pizzas, Tivoli also has a wide variety of options to choose from on their menu. The food has always been nice each time I have been there but the service was not the best in the world.
• Aba Guben – A really cozy restaurant with delicious food. But the one funny thing I’ve noticed about Aba Guben is, even though they have the most Ethiopian name possible, they do not serve a single Ethiopian dish whatsoever.
• Tomoca – Tomoca is the best place to get coffee according to most coffee lovers. With Ethiopia being the origin of coffee, serving the best coffee is kind of a big deal. They also pack and sell their coffee if you want to take some home. Unfortunately I am not a coffee person so I cannot vouch for them myself.

Nightlife

Old Airport is a mostly residential area and not a place you go to for a party. The only parties I hear of are the ones the residents throw in their homes. Other than that, except for a few local bars by the military compound and the small bar sections inside some of the restaurants, Old Airport can get pretty quiet at night.

Simply, Bole is where one usually goes to find most of the luxuries that Addis hast to offer and it’s considered to be the nicest part of Addis by most of the city’s residents. It’s the part of town that has transformed very rapidly within the past decade in to a concrete jungle. A construction site can be seldom avoided nowadays while walking on the two parallel Bole roads.

Bole stretches from Meskel square all the way to the airport. And also the road parallel to the Bole road which stretches from the Atlas area to the airport is also considered as Tele Bole/Bole Medhanealem.

Accommodation

Living in Bole is without a doubt very costly. If you want to live in a two bedroom furnished house close to Bole road you’d better be prepared to pay anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000 USD a month. It is the same with apartments, if not more. If it is tucked away at the back or your landlord lives with you in the same compound, you can sometimes find houses for around $500 less.

And, of course, there are those houses that you’ll end up paying a gazillion dollars for while most prefer to live in a shared house with friends to be able to afford the conveniences. These large, fancy houses are around but are usually the domain of the highly-paid types.

For short stays there are always guest houses like Mr. Martin’s Cozy place offering rooms for as low as $25 a night.

Shopping

There are plenty of stores for clothes, shoes, and accessories along Bole Road – they’re actually pretty hard to miss. You’ll find all kins of stores in mixed use buildings like the Getu Commercial Center, DH Gheda Tower, and the Friendship Building. You can also find loads of all kinds of shops in two of the city’s few malls: Edna Mall and Dembel City Mall.

As for supermarkets, there are quite a few. There are two medium sized grocery stores just by Edna Mall and also larger ones like Shoa Supermarket by Wollo Sefer, Novis Supermarket by Japan Road, and Friendship Supermarket inside the Friendship Mall.

Recreation

If you are up for a work out you are in luck. There are gyms inside most of the hotels in Bole that are open for memberships. If you want a swim with your workout you can sign up at Harmony Hotel or Bole Rock. If you’re in to saunas, Desalegn Hotel has a gym membership package that includes their sauna.

If you want to watch movies fresh out of the box office then the Matti Multiplex is the place, located inside Edna Mall. And in the same mall you can find a 7D cinema if you want to get your blood pumping with six minutes of sheer excitement (but it is not for the pregnant or the faint of heart). Ah Addis… where seven dimensions come straight to your cinema seat.

Also in Edna mall there is a gaming zone full of fancy video games and gizmos for those who are cooler than the rest. Even though the place in swamped with kids most of the time it is fun to bear with it for a couple of hours to enjoy racing and shooting stuff. At least once.

There are three tennis courts that are open to the public around the Bole Dildiy area if that is the kind of thing that you’re into. But it is advised to go early to avoid long waits.

Restaurants & Cafes

Oh where do I start, if there is one thing that Bole does not need more of, it is cafes. There are cafes almost every 50 steps you take on Bole road.

• Kaldi’s Coffee – This is the biggest café chain in Addis and Bole was where they first started. There are at least four more in the Bole area alone. They are mostly known for their frappuccinos and coffee.
• Natani Café – This cafe known for its cheese cake and people just can’t stop talking about it. Maybe it is time to go try it. They cannot all be wrong.
• Paresienne Cafe – This is one of the popular cafes in town to meet friends in the morning, have some bacon with your breakfast and gossip before going in to work.

There are a few very nice restaurants in Bole for those who roam its streets. Bole is where people usually go to wine and dine. These restaurants are expensive compared to ones in other parts of town but many agree that they’re worth the extra buck.

• Le Grand Rev – This Italian restaurant is tucked away behind the main road and is a place that people choose this place for its serenity. And of course the food.
• Rodeo – This is a bar/restaurant that has a western cowboy look and feel to it. Overwhelmingly decorated with signs and souvenirs, Rodeo offers a cocktail and food menu like no other. The bartender is none other than the owner himself and the service is great. They play nice music on a big screen too.
• Antica – This is one of the nicest restaurants to go to as they have very good food, an excellent service and they even do deliveries.
• Yod Abyssinia – This is a cultural restaurant by Bole Dildiy where foreigners flock to on their first visit to Addis. Yod serves tasty Ethiopian food and drinks to its customers while entertaining them with some live performance by traditional bands and dancers. It is quite a fun place to take someone on their first day.

Nightlife

Bole is the place to party. It is responsible for the purchase of too much Panadol and the producing of too many scandalous nights. There are enough bars and lounges in Bole to make half of the area’s workforce call in sick the next day.

• Black Rose – This is a lounge with easy listening and world music playing at all times. But don’t let that fool you, it is at black rose where ‘out for just a couple of drinks’ can lead easily to club-hopping the whole night. They serve various cocktails and shooters along with a few snacks to make the morning bearable. The service is very good but you will surely pay good money for it. Quite a bit.
• Flirt Lounge – One of the places that partiers go to before heading to the 4AM clubs. It has a live band playing two nights a week and a DJ during the weekends. They have a VIP area upstairs where the prices are a bit more than downstairs and they also serve shisha (hookah) up there for the privileged.
• Tri-up – This is a restaurant/bar by day and changes to a mad party house by night. The music gets louder and the fun gets merrier as the pendulum keeps swinging. The crowd is mostly young and fun loving so there’s no doubt that you will see people busting moves even though it’s not a club.
• Oh Canada – A quiet place where you have meals with friends and family during the day but the story changes on the weekend. The Ottawa Senators obsessed owner/manager Lily turns her backyard in to an awesome party den. Great music and nice atmosphere.