We left Sagres behind this morning and made our way to Lagos. It took about 35 minutes to drive less than 40 kilometres. As our Uber got nearer and nearer to our destination, we were reminded why we don’t drive in cities in Europe. Within a couple of blocks, the street got pretty much the width of the car, with walls on both sides. I wasn’t sure the car could fit, yet our driver managed it and kept the car’s paint job unmarred by avoiding the wall by a couple of millimetres each time, all of that at what seemed like blazing speed but I’m sure couldn’t have been faster than 5 kph.
We were dropped off at 📍Black & White for coffee ahead of getting a pizza just around the corner at the Lagos location of 📍 Arte Bianca for a pizza breakfast, essentially repeating our pattern from the past few days from Sagres. The problem with the best laid plans is they don’t support first contact with the enemy: reality. In this, the enemy was a lineup for the coffee shop. With our full backpacks, we were not ready to line up for an untold amount of time for coffee. We walked a few minutes to 📍The Studio Coffee Roaster & Cafe. Their coffee was good but not top tier. The crown will remain in Coimbra for now (see Day 9 and 10).
Lagos is a lot friendlier to tourism and it shows by the number of visitors. Walking to coffee, pizza and to our apartment forced us to re-engage our crowd weaving skills. Since we left Coimbra (and mostly Porto), we haven’t have to weave around people or keep an eye out for other pedestrians walking straight into us because they’re not looking where they’re going. Downtown Lagos isn’t that big but it’s setup for the travelling crowd. Restaurant advertising piri piri chicken with beers and bars advertising Aperol Spritz and everyday happy hours abound. The crowd to keep all of those in business is there too. Lagos is known for it’s sunshine, beaches and magnificent coastal vistas. And that’s what brought us here too!
We’re here for four days so we have to pace ourselves. After check-in we went for a little bit of groceries and used some of our free time in a more populous town to find replacement sandals for Karine as one of her pairs got damaged. The sole had an air leak making them do a snare drum noise at every other step. Great to keep a beat but that’s not a feature we look for on vacation walks. We found a shoe store fairly close and within 20 minutes we had replacement sandals with an extra pair to be safe.
After all of that our social batteries were drained. We‘ve been in places with less people for a while and we definitively needed some time to acclimate. Thus, we went back to our apartment, sat on the patio with its partial view of the ocean and chilled for the rest of the day.
We emerged from our people isolation to go for dinner at 📍Avenida, a Michelin listed restaurant in a hotel next to the canal that separates Lagos downtown from its long sandy beaches. We’ve learned our lesson and steered clear of the tasting menu (unless the place specializes in it, à la carte usually offers a better experience) and went for what our research pointed as their signature starters and opted for their boneless ribeye for two with a truffle risotto that were both absolutely perfect. The one surprising element of that meal was the vegetables. Karine and I make a point of ordering vegetables whenever we can to try and keep a smidge of fiber in our vacation diet. The chef might be able to do bone marrow, steak and risotto exceptionally well, yet they boiled the vegetables and forgot to add flavour back. Boiled frozen veggies would have been just as good. We’re not lacking in comparison either, for the last few meals whenever we ordered a side of vegetables with our mains we got boiled frozen vegetables. It’s as if they there’s a law against olive oil and herbs ever touching broccolis. Other than the vegetables incident the meal was a great opener for our food tour of the city.
