Welcome to Nairobi...

Bienvenido a Nairobi. After two 8 hour flights and a 2.5 hour layover in London (where I found lots of wonderful Royal Wedding memorabilia), we finally arrived in Nairobi on Saturday night around 9 pm.  Our driver, Chief was waiting there for us and drove us to our hotel about 20 minutes from the airport. It's winter here in Kenya, meaning the temperatures are around 70 degrees instead of 90 and it's a bit rainy, but luckily that made it nice and cool when we landed. The streets of Nairobi are surprisingly clean and the billboards for things like Bata shoes and Dettol make me feel like I'm in India. We got to the hotel and then ate vegetable samosas and finally let the exhaustion take over.

The hotel is called Hotel Gracia and is very green and quiet.

I love four post beds with mosquito nets!

The pool was right by our room. 

The little building is the hotel restaurant.

Saturday, we woke up, had breakfast and then Chief took us around Nairobi. First stop was a giraffe park where we got to feed the giraffes!

Their tongues are black and feel kind of scratchy. 

Hey guys. 

True story. We almost saw a woman get headbutted by a baby giraffe. It was hilarious. 

Next was an elephant orphanage that is part of the Nairobi National Park. It was feeding time when we got there.

Here they come! The oldest was 3 years old. They were all really cute and small and brown. 

The giraffe park and elephant center were both located in the Karen suburb of Nairobi, which seemed fairly wealthy because we passed the vice president's house. It is named after Karen Blixen, the woman who wrote "Out of Africa" and owned much of the land in the area. Her house is now a museum but we didn't have time to see it.

We then headed closer to Town to buy phones and eat a very authentic Kenyan lunch of burritos.

Our matching phones! Sam was less thrilled about this. 

Our Van. Chief (in the hat) was a big fan of Seal. Lot's of "Kiss from a Rose"

Then, we went to the city center to visit Uhuru park or freedom park. It has several trees planted by the activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai.

A view of the whole city from the park. 

Lastly, we went to a market where I may or may not have stolen a tiny hippo stone carving. The "maker" said it was a gift but we were then told that Kenyans are so polite they sometimes just tell you what you want to hear. Either way, I avoided walking past there on the way out. 

For dinner, we came back to the hotel where we had a traditional dish called "ugali" which is a cornmeal dough type of substance that is a staple of Kenyan meals. It has no real taste so you eat it with a vegetable dish. I don't have a picture of it but I'm sure I'll post one soon since it seems like I'm going to be eating a lot of ugali over the next two months. 

Overall, it was a very busy and fun day. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow: driving to Kisumu with various stops along the way!