Travel Postcard: 48 hours in Asmara

ASMARA (Reuters Life!) - Not many travelers end up in Asmara, one of Africa's least-known and most beautiful cities. But if you ever have 48 hours to spend in the Eritrean capital, here are some tips on how to make the best of a short stay.

Given Eritrea's turbulent history, including a 30-year independence war until 1991 followed by a 1998-2000 border conflict with Ethiopia, tourism remains underdeveloped.

Those who make it -- among them, plenty of Italians exploring their former African colony -- are stunned by Asmara, especially its architecture.

FRIDAY

6 p.m. Join the locals in a "passeggiata", or stroll, down Harnet (Liberation) Avenue, the wide main street where residents gather in the early evening to meet and greet. With its pavement cafes and extraordinary buildings from the Italian colonial era -- art deco to neo-classical -- you feel you are in the Mediterranean, rather than Africa.

Older Eritreans will greet you in Italian, the young in English. You can have no fear of being robbed.

8 p.m. Choose from an array of restaurants round the small city to enjoy a traditional meal of "injera", a spongy pancake served on a tray with stew on top. If you are less adventurous, the menu will have plenty of pasta dishes, too. As you go home, observe soldiers on street corners checking the papers of the residents in a sign of Asmara's stricter undertones.

12 p.m. Before you go to sleep, listen to the midnight church bells in the distance, breaking the silence in this tranquil city of half a million people on a plateau 2,500 feet

up from the Red Sea coast. Remember half of the Eritrean population is Muslim, so get ready to be awakened by the call to prayer!