(August 29th & 30th)
Saturday we were supposed to go to Ga West to visit that side of town, but for some reason the trip was canceled- so we had the day off. We decided to go to downtown Accra to explore the market and see if we could find a beach to hang out at. When we went downtown we went right to the cultural center because one of the guys in the group went there early to try to get a drum fixed that he bought there. Honestly, I hate going down there. We went there with our guides for our tour of downtown and it is just an uber tourist center. The people there are super push, as soon as they see you they come running out and talk to you about any thing and everything- all the mean while throwing a “come see my shop” in.. and everyone we have talked to (including the guide book) say that it really isn’t worth going there. Everything you can get there you can find other places for a lot cheaper and from not as pushy (tourist targets) people. From there we walked along the coast to try to find a beach.
We found out that the only swimmable beach was kind of far away. So we found this restaurant that was a little down the rock face really close to the ocean. From there we were able to hike up the side of a rock to a big rock that was right on the ocean. It was a really cool view. We hung out there for about an hour or so just taking in the ocean and everything (the pictures I put up are from that restaurant of the coastline we saw).
From there we took a tro-tro to Osu, which, for those familiar with Grand Rapids, is somewhat like Gaslight Village. Its a section of Accra that caters to westerners and its a little more up scale. It was a pretty cool area. We went to a place for dinner called Frankie’s. It totally could have fit in downtown Chicago, kind of a slick upscale diner type place. They had big plasmas showing the English Premier League- which was fun to watch. I got a veggie sub that was pretty good, although expensive. We walked around the area a little more and found a pretty cool coffee shop/bakery. I got a chocolate croissant cause it looked really good. It was. After that we walked around a little more before taking a tro-tro back to Legon.
Then on Sunday after a little confusion, we decided to go check out the mall. Sundays are kind of like they are in Grand Rapids, in that a lot of things are closed. So some people said that the mall was closed, others said that only the movie theatre in the mall would be open, and others said most of the mall would be open. We decided to just go check it out because we wanted to get out of ISH and if it was open, cool.. other wise its like a 10 minute tro-tro ride back to campus.
As it turns out, the mall was open. There were a few stores that were closed, but almost everything was open. It is actually a super modern mall. They have a Nike store, Puma store, Apple store, and then some other brands I hadn’t heard of. The two big stores are Game and Shoprite. Game is sort of like a Target/Walmart and then Shoprite is a pretty big grocery store. We hung out in the food court for a while because there is a coffee shop with pretty decent internet. It was pretty fun. Its hard to find a decent cup of coffee here for some reason though. Everyone uses instant stuff- which surprises me because coffee is grown in Africa.. I’m not really sure why there isn’t drip coffee. And then espresso stuff is kind of sketch because they do not have legitimate milk, a lot of it is from powders and other weird forms.. so lattes taste a little watery. It was a pretty good spot to just sit down for the day- the only thing is its a little noisy, so next time we are going to try going a little farther down the road to a place called Maxmart. Maxmart is a 3 level western grocery store that is supposed to carry a lot of American and European brands. They also have a coffee shop on one of the levels- it is supposed to have pretty good sandwiches, so we’ll see how that compares.
That was pretty much the extent of our first weekend free here. We have normal classes all this week and then this weekend we are going to Cape Coast for a few days. We are going to go to some of the old slave forts as well as do a hike/canopy walk in the forest/jungle (I’m not exactly sure what it is, but it sounds like it should be a lot of fun).
