It’s not, per say, a beach day. Yes we did go on a beach, yes we did sit at a beach bar but, no we did not sit on the beach. What we did is walk along the beach for a couple of hours.
Our day started with pancakes and a first coffee at 📍Black & White. As we mentioned previously it has been selected as our brunch place for the rest of our stay in Lagos. Karine has the opportunity to try their cinnamon buns that, for some unexplainable reason, they found a way of adding almonds to. Before heading out on our walk we stopped for a second coffee at the last coffee shop that came out of our research on the city 📍Coffee & Waves. While Lagos doesn’t have the surfer focus Sagres does, (refer to day 17 and 18 if you don’t know what we mean) it is fertile ground for surfer themed commerce. 📍Coffee & Waves is nowhere near the water, has a surf theme decor and makes good coffee. We’re not sure what coffee and surf have in common, coffee being an altitude plant where, I’m sure, there is zero surfing, but they sure did a good job with their coffee and won the best coffee in town in our opinion.
Caffeinated, we headed out, crossed the channel to walk a loop along the sandy beach of Lagos. Yesterday we went on the southwestern side of the city to walk along the cliffs. Today we’re heading mostly east along the 📍Meia Praia. The walk andter the town but before the anctual beach wasn’t that great. We walked along all the normal buildings hosting the services of any busy marina. After that we got on the boardwalk that runs parallel to the beach but behind the sand dunes. On our right we had a display of resorts and construction sites building more resorts. On our left we had sand dunes and birds. We saw mostly small birds going from one sand shrub to another. Halfway through our walk we got to the end of the boardwalk and turned around, removed our footwear, and got our feet wet walking in the surf. We walked about 3 of the 6km of that beach, feet in the cashing waves. It was warm, not at all windy and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky; perfect weather for a beach walk.
At the end of our walk we ran into a small “ferry” (a modified rowboat with an outmotor) that offers to cross the channel for 1€ per person instead of walking the 20 minutes required to get to the same point on the other side. As it would save us the time we decided to give it a go. Three minutes and two near-miss later (our captain assuming he has the right of way regardless of traffic on the channel) we were on the other side. We headed home and relaxed until dinner time.
We had dinner at 📍Tasca Jota, a steak house (the fridge full of dry aged steaks was a dead giveaway). We had what we normally have in any steakhouse: a huge steak! While not as good as what we had at 📍Avenida on the day we arrived in the city, it was also about half the price. A satisfying dinner that concluded the day perfectly.