Neither of us slept too well, unfortunately.  The only glass-half-full item we could think of is that it would perhaps be more likely we could get some sleep on the plane tonight.  We futzed around on the web until after 08:00; Justin saw that Arsenal had won again the night before.  We got breakfast around 08:30, and then headed out at 09:00.  Our first stop of the day was Jamestown.  On the way we went past the independence monument, which Sena said we’d see a bit later.  Compared with Lomé and Cotonou, there were way more cars and way fewer motorcycles.  Accordingly, there was a lot more traffic.

When we got to Jamestown, we met our local guide, Nice One.  He showed us a slave dungeon, which was used during the time of the slave trade.  There wasn’t much to see, so we walked a bit east, towards the lighthouse.  His voice was hoarse, and was hard to hear over the bikes.  He couldn’t join us once we left British Accra and got to Dutch Accra; it had something to do with licensing for different areas or something similar.  So Sena walked us around the area with old stone houses.  By happenstance we ran into a man who he knew, who was recovering from a recent stroke.

Then we started wandering some narrow streets, with market stalls out selling different types of things.  Some people bought some pottery, and then we saw a short demonstration from a man making Kenkey, which is fermented corn mixed with corn meal, wrapped in corn husks.  Stylistically it looked similar to tamales.  Brian said the taste wasn’t so comparable.  It was scorching hot outside, and there were open flames all around us, plus smoke, so while we were interested in seeing Kenkey made, we were pretty stoked to head on out.  Walking those narrow streets (somewhere near the Customs House, maybe a bit north or northwest from there) was fascinating, and would have made for a really interesting video, but it just didn’t seem appropriate. 

It was so incredibly hot outside that it was really nice to get back into the bus.  It was a short drive northeast to get back to the Independence Monument and Black Star Square.  We had 5 minutes or so to wander around and take some photos, and then we continued east to the Artists Alliance Gallery, a nice art gallery right on the coast.  We had maybe 20 minutes to walk around, and then we got back on the bus.  All of the single ladies were a bit late to the bus, to the surprise of no one.

Our next stop was to see Eric, who runs a coffin shop.  He makes intricately designed custom wooden coffins, designed in the shapes of objects specific to a person’s profession.  So we saw coffins designed to look like trucks, planes, shoes, chili peppers, chickens, crabs, and lions (reserved for royalty).  These custom coffins take only about 3 weeks to make, but remember, most funerals aren’t for months until after a person passes, so 3 weeks is nothing.  We saw them in the process of building a football shoe coffin.  We also saw a book - Buried In Style - that had dozens of other designs, including a bulldozer and a camera (which was probably the best one we saw).  He even showed us the design he picked out for his own funeral, a carpentry tool.

From there we went over to a ritzy part of town, next to the Kempinski Hotel, a mall we think called The Galleria.  Inside we saw a couple very interesting art galleries.  The galleries, as well as the rest of the mall, was completely empty.  It was odd to see fancy malls and art exhibits after everything else we saw this trip, including even this morning.  On our way to lunch we passed by parliament, and right next door a military cemetery.

Lunch was at Buka, some place that Jane had heard about from a friend that lives in Accra.  It was theoretically one of the fanciest restaurants in the city.  Like so many of the “fancy” restaurants we’ve been to the past 5 or so years, fancy is a synonym for impractical.  The menu was once again on a QR code, so the waiter had to come connect all of us to the wi-fi so that we wouldn’t pay roaming fees just to access a menu.  Everyone at the other tables were scolling around aimlessly on their phones, but that was probably for the best, because the live musicians in the same room were playing so loudly that we couldn’t hear each other anyway.  We aren’t “fancy” restaurant people.  Thankfully the food and drink were quite good.  Crystal got a salad with avocado, onion, smoked chicken, tomato, etc.  Justin got a dish with oxtail and couscous.  Justin also got a couple of passion fruit daiquiris.

We got back to the hotel around 14:45.  We prioritized charging everything, cleaning up, packing, etc., and we had plenty of time.  We also made sure to do our Duolingo and continue our streaks.  We headed down 15 minutes early to pay our bill.  The guy at the checkout looked like Ben Simmons.  To everyone’s surprise, Hertz was the last one down, after being first for pretty much everything the whole rest of the trip.  On the bus to the airport, everyone was looking for photos of others, group photos, etc., and sharing over Airdrop.  Over the two weeks, we’d all become experts on how to navigate to the Airdrop settings on our phones and change the status to “everyone for 10 minutes” such that we could easily send photos to one another.

Sena had warned us that traffic was bad, so we allocated an hour for a 3 mile drive.  It was close to accurate, as the traffic was a lot like LA or the Bay Area.  Whilst sitting in traffic, we saw the Presidential Palace, and we also saw a Brussels Airlines flight take off - presumably to Lomé, due to return in a couple hours.  We got to the airport around 18:15, so the drive was only 45 minutes instead of 60.  We said our goodbyes to Abass and Sena, and then we slowly diverged.  First Hertz went off to check-in to his flight on KLM, then Brian for Turkish, and then Jane for British.

We went with Taryn and Stephenie, since we were on the same flight.  Even though we’d all checked in online and had bar codes on our phones, we still had to get paper tickets, so that there was something for the immigration people to stamp.  Once we had the tickets, we went through passport control.  The man at Crystal’s booth asked when she’d be returning, and the answer was “I don’t know, but someday.”  Stephenie and Taryn were in business class, so they had a different security line than us.  We saw Brian in our line.

After a good amount of time, we eventually got through and found the lounge upstairs.  To our surprise, neither Taryn nor Stephenie were there.  But Brian showed up a few minutes after us and sat down with us.  We watched Barcelona play Newcastle on the TV.  Eventually Stephenie and Taryn showed up, and then 10 minutes later, Hertz did as well.  Jane, meanwhile, was having issues with the ETIAS deal from the UK, and couldn’t get checked in because of that.  The people with the airline couldn’t find her original ETIAS, and when she tried to reapply, the UK told her she already had one.  Her last-resort plan was to just transit through London and skip her night there, but she managed to get it sorted right as we all started to leave.  

Brian left first, then Taryn and Stephenie.  So we chatted with Hertz for a bit.  He’s older than we were thinking, 76 years old.  His wife (who stayed at home for the trip) was about to turn 75, so he showed us a gift he got her for her birthday.  Ironically, we got along great with him after a little dust-up in Benin, go figure.  Life is weird sometimes.  We got downstairs just before 21:00, and the people at check-in made us feel rushed, which was wild since check-in wasn’t even supposed to start until 21:00.

The plane wasn’t remotely full, and we got seated and hoped for sleep.  We did manage to get a good amount of sleep on the way to Brussels.  It was first thing in the morning in Brussels, so the coldest time of the day, and we got a nice burst of cold air as we got onto the jetway.  We had to go through security again, and Crystal chose a different line than Justin, Taryn, and Stephenie.  Her line was incredibly slow, with literally 3 out of every 4 bags being flagged.  It got to the point where Taryn and Stephenie said their goodbyes whilst Crystal waited for her bag.

It also got to the point where Justin got in the “other passports” line, figuring Crystal would catch up once she got her bag and whizzed through the automated EU-only line.  She did whizz through that line, but even so Justin had cleared immigration 5-10 minutes before her.  Once back in Terminal A, we found the Pop-Up Loft, and hung out there for hours.  Luckily we arrived when we did, since it was over capacity for the second half of our time there.  We slept more on the plane - apparently we were tired.  Back in Tenerife, we had a jetway for once, and took the 114 to the 102 to the 353 bus to get home, arriving just before 17:00.  Cerdito showed up about an hour later, and everything was back to our usual routine.