3 Nights in Paris

October 4, 2019

We arrived in Paris in the evening. After struggling to connect with our uber driver, we finally him. He spoke no English. I have no idea why we didn’t try to get a train or something, but we were probably really tired. That uber ended up being uber expensive!

As we drove through Paris, I was like hmm, I wasn’t feeling the vibe at all. When the driver stopped on the street of our hotel, I looked around the block like what the hell?

We booked our Paris trip after 9 hours on our laptops booking trips to other cities, so we weren’t in the mood to do any extensive research about where to stay. We picked a place that was walking distance from the Louvre and the Eurostar train station. So anyway, we arrived on the street of our hotel, which ended up being a really commercial block, but closed, seeing as it was Sunday evening. Our hotel had this really narrow alley way type entrance, we walked up and down and then had to call the hotel to figure out how to find the entrance.

We checked in (tourism tax is a thing you should always have, they almost always charge it at the hotel). The room was small but as nice as it looked online, which was a relief. It wasn’t that late but we were tired so we ordered uber eats and went to bed. The next morning, we made the biggest mistake of the trip- eating hotel breakfast. Now the breakfast was only 7 euros per head but it was the most pointless scam of a breakfast ever. The coffee machine coffee was so bad that I had instant coffee instead. Do you know how bad coffee has to be for instant to be a good alternative???

We booked Louvre tickets online and walked there. It ended up being a pretty nice walk. It was nice to get to the louvre and walk past the large crowd queing for tickets. (Tip- always book online). The Louvre was amazing. After seeing the exhibits we wanted (its too large to see absolutely everything), we bought some stuff from the museum gift shop and bought some lunch. The mona lisa is soooo tiny and so guarded and so crowded that you’re probably better off looking at it online.

After that we went into the Louvre gardens where we spent a couple of more hours. We spent the whole day at the Louvre and it was magical. We left and it started raining so we took an overpriced keke to the Eiffel tower. which was blocked off, for some reason. We decided to postpone our cheesy tourist photos to the next day and went to have some coffee instead. The metro back to the hotel was super efficient, cheap and easy to figure out. Walking to the hotel from the station (via sephora which was also super close to our hotel) what did we find almost directly opposite our hotel? A Lidl! That “breakfast” we had at the hotel would have been like 1 euro each. To make up for our breakfast purchase, we bought drinks and fruit to have at the hotel.

With our Lidl and sephora haul, we did what made sense- had mini facials in the hotel room!

Writing this post has made me realise that we didn’t do a single Parisian night out. We didn’t even have champagne! We have to do better next time.

The next day, we grabbed water from Lidl on our way out and took the metro to the Eiffel tower. It was a super cloudy day, so our pictures were dead. After stumbling on a scooter a couple of times, we went to Arc de Triomphe, which is a block. Nothing to see there (no offence to the rich history of the block).

The good thing is we were on Champs- Élysées Which is the fanciest shopping strip. After doing a bit of coffee and desserts, a bit of shopping and a bit of lunch, we finally headed back to our hotel.

In the middle of the night, I woke up with surprise cramps! I had no painkillers. Including this because if you don’t want to carry painkillers cross border (which is dramatic and dumb, like I was), you should buy some painkillers when you arrive, so when you need it in the middle of the night, you have it!

After 4 hours of excruciating pain, we walked to find the closest open pharmacy. Just looking at painkillers on the shelves was enough to make me feel better. That and buying like 3 croissants! Also, I have to say, I didn’t find the croissants in Paris to be that much better than other places, which was disappointing!

At the station, you go through French immigration to leave and then British immigration straight after, so when youre on the train, youre already technically in England. I wish airport immigration could be like that as well. It is so much more efficient. With a nice settling into our Eurostar seats, we were off to London!

How to plan a holiday to 6 countries in 3 weeks with your Nigerian passport

August 1, 2019

In May, I went on a multi country holiday. I went with my husband, because it was our honeymoon. Lol. We went to 6 countries and 7 cities in 3 weeks (Dubai, London, Rome, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Paris and Birmingham.) We got asked two questions again and again when we were on the trip:

how much was it?
what agent did you use?

There’s no point telling you how much the trip was because I feel like holiday budgets depend on so many factors that can affect the price in a million ways; where you go, when you go, the airlines or train companies you use, what class you fly, the hotels you stay in and the activities you choose to do on holiday. This post addresses the second question because we planned and booked the entire trip ourselves.

Because my husband and I had both been to Dubai before, we both knew exactly where we wanted to stay. He hadn’t done all the touristy stuff, so we decided to book tours and etc through Emirates holidays. Emirates Holidays ended up booking our tours and airport transfers and we paid for our hotel through them (they had a discount). If you are concerned about the quality of your tours and transfers, It is best to book yourself.

We booked everything else ourselves. We sat in a room on our laptops for 9 hours and booked flights, hotels, trains, tours and other transport. 7 flights, three trains, 5 hotels and 1 air bnb. We also applied for our visas ourselves.

Visas

I will go into a more detailed visa post when I review each country, but you should always check for up to date information on the official visa page of the country you’re travelling to. Visa regulations and requirements change so quickly, you may be bound by completely different rules when you’re applying for the same visa as someone else, 1 month apart.

Hotels

The biggest consideration for hotels is what kind of trip you want to have. Do you plan to go out during the day, or more at night or both? What attractions do you absolutely HAVE To see. When you have that information, you have a starting point. If you want to go out mostly at night, obviously you want to be in a super bustling area that's safe to be around at night. If you're mostly going out during the day, then your tour attractions would be more important.

In Dubai, we wanted to stay on the JBR walk because we wanted to wake up and walk two minutes to the beach. Tour companies pick you up from your hotel, so it wasn't important to consider tours in hotel choice, plus the desert tour is far from everything anyway. It was Ramadan so we wanted to be somewhere that would come alive after lftar, as the city is very subdued in the daytime during Ramadan. 5 star hotels are also cheaper in Dubai than Europe, so it was worth staying in one just because.

We went to London twice. On the first trip, it was one night only and I needed to see my cousin, so we booked a hotel 1 mile or two tube stops away from her house.

In Rome, we booked a hotel that was walking distance to three of the main tourist attractions. I'm talking 6 minute walk to the trevi fountain. The hotel was meh but the location was excellent and there was a great restaurant downstairs. There is food everywhere in Rome so that wasn't a booking consideration.

In Amsterdam, we couldn't decide so we booked two different hotels (I wouldn't recommend this for a short trip, it was more annoying than we anticipated) We stayed like a few 100 metres from Anne Frank Huis the first time and stayed practically in the red light district the second night. The second hotel was also super close to the train station we were leaving from.

Paris was really confusing for us in terms of area and we just went for something close to Gare du Nord where we were leaving from. In the end, it was alright. We ended up taking the metro a few times and we were able to walk 20 minutes to the Louvre.

Our second trip in London, we wanted to be central but in a quiet area, so we chose Marylebone. Because it was the longest part of our trip we went for an Airbnb rather than a hotel.

Some more tips for accommodation:

If you try to weigh the value of accommodation by thinking 'I can buy this with that money', you're going to end up staying in shit places, because good accommodation is hardly ever cheap.
Many countries will 90% of the time, have a tourism tax which they never include in the cost of the hotel (or even highlight when you’re booking). It's never expensive but an unexpected cost is an unexpected expense.
Always pack toothpaste, a toothbrush and lotion. Every hotel will give you soap and towels but even 5 star hotels won’t always give you toothpaste unless you request it. Don't take the risk. Hotel lotion is NEVER moisturising enough, so avoid ashy skin and pack your own.
Don't be obsessed with picking a perfect place. You're bound to make some mistakes
Do research, even if it's googling 'best areas for tourists Paris 2019'
Use booking.com
if you stay in an Airbnb, take a video of the place as soon as your arrive and everyday you’re there, to serve as evidence, if the host tries to blame you for breaking something.
Always always always pack a mini first aid kit with things like paracetamol (paracetamol is a safe painkiller to travel with) and Andrews liver salts because trust me, it’s not fun to walk around with luggage and cramps trying to find an open pharmacy at 7am or to not have anything to stop you from throwing up a million times if you get food poisoning (or are hungover)

Travel.

The best way to figure out how to plan your trip is studying a map. If you have no map skills, you have to do a lot of googling and base it on price and ease of access between cities. We did not plan the trip in the most geographically sensible way, we had our own special (and random) set of considerations. Once you decide all the places you want to go, picking how you go from city to city isn’t really that difficult. We did a mixture of trains and planes because trains were our preferred travel choice but it wasn’t always practical (too long or too expensive)
Short haul low cost airlines like easyjet are not always as bad as you've heard. Pay for extra legroom if you can-sometimes it gives you priority boarding and sometimes, a little extra luggage allowance. Always check in online when you use them (for most of them, you can check in up to a month in advance) and get to the airport early because security queues can be very crazy. We had to pay for priority access in one airport because the queue was insane.
Confirm from the the transport service provider what your ticket includes. We booked 1st class tickets on a six hour train from Amsterdam to Germany, assuming it would include food and wifi. The tickets did not include food and the train did not have wifi. They didn’t accept debit cards as payment for their food cart. Luckily, I always carry a bottle of water and a snack when I’m travelling and i’m Nigerian and therefore used to not having wifi, so it was fine (but shocking).

Experiences.

Try Airbnb experiences. There are all sorts of things there that you wouldn’t normally know to look for in a new city.
Book a local photographer to follow you around and take your photo at popular tourist spots. This is really useful if you’re a solo traveller or a couple that wants photos that aren’t awkward selfies. There are a lot of photographers on Airbnb experiences and honestly, it’s not even that expensive. They can also serve as tour guides.
Research and make a list of things you would like to see and honestly it’s okay if some of the most popular things don’t even appeal to you.
Be flexible- the weather might be different to what you expected and invalidate 3/4 of your wardrobe, you might get food poisoning, the hotel might be shit when you get there. You need to be flexible or you won’t be able to find the joy when things go wrong.
Allow yourself downtime and just time to wander around- honestly, travelling is exhausting and it can often feel like you need to maximise your trip money by not doing something every minute of everyday. I like to think the hotel money is a waste if I don’t get in a few naps.
Always check before you make assumptions- i’ve repeated this so many times because we did this a lot. Sometimes, you can just call the hotel and ask for a hotel pick up- which is probably cheaper and safer than a lot of options especially when you don’t know the place. Ask, ask and ask again.
If there's a grocery store near you, use it first before anything else, so you can prioritise your food money on food experiences (like nice restaurants). In Paris, we ate the hotel breakfast the first day (not worth it) and then realised there was a grocery store close by where we could have bought breakfast at for a tiny fraction of the breakfast price.
Download a translation app that you can use offline especially in places like Paris where locals will pretend to not understand you. Also download offline maps and save local emergency numbers.

This post can go on forever, I’ve tried to keep it short. I will be putting up travel guides or tips for each country throughout the month. Comment or message me with any questions (apart from how much the trip cost) and I’d be happy to answer!

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Vacation Diaries: Accra, Ghana

January 10, 2018

I've been to Accra a few times before, but never for Accra, do you get? Like one time I went for a wedding and barely stepped out of Labadi beach hotel- another time, I went to stay in this resort in the hills and went into town to shop and have dinner once- This trip promised to be longer and different- a trip to finally SEE Accra.

A note on yellow cards

You need a yellow fever card to travel to Ghana, South Africa and some other African countries. I already had one (it lasts for 10 years) from my recent trips to Ghana and South Africa, but a few other people going on the trip did not, and so I was dragged along to the Lagos Port Health Authority.
The process is quick- you need two photocopies of your passport data page and you need to go at least 10 days before your flight (it takes that long for the vaccine to kick in). The injection is super quick and not painful (if your nurse is skilled).
In 2013, all countries on the regime introduced new cards- I got my card in 2015 or so and they've already updated the cards again- so you're probably not going to get away with getting a card at the airport from a guy thats going to charge you way more than it costs.
If you don't have the card, you can get the shot in Ghana, but if you go to SA without the card, you'll probably get returned.
If you're travelling from another state, look for Port health in the airport. It's called Port Health because it's near the Ports- Duh!

A note on flights

Return tickets cost approximately =N=100,000. Can be more or less depending on timing, airline, etc- but that's a good average.
Flights take an hour or less from lagos and about 1.5 hours from Abuja.
Road travel costs about =N20,000. each way from Lagos and takes about 8 hours.

Anyway, travel day- yay! Is it just me, or is it weird to follow international travel procedures when you're flying less than an hour away to somewhere you can drive to? There were some angry Medview passengers in the airport yelling about their flight being delayed for over 24 hours with no word on when they were going to leave- awkward because their counter was right next to ours and we had to brave the angry mob to check in.

No-one needs to be this happy in Nigerian duty free

Isn't it funny that the KFC is like the unofficial economy lounge- or nah? We arrived on the tarmac to a tiny plane- I have travel anxiety on the best of the days and I had never been on a plane that small- I overheard another passenger telling his friend to "pretend its a private jet" so that's what I did. 50 Minutes later we landed in Accra.

We bought sim cards and data plans and tried to use the ATM. I'd say sort your sim and data out at the airport- it's quick and the plans in the airport were far better than the usual network rates.

A note on Naira cards

remember that they do not work outside of Nigeria for ATM withdrawals- Yes, EVEN in Ghana. It was super awkward to travel all the way to another country and have no cash. I was there on the phone to my bank, trying to see if there was "anything I could do" .
I used my card to pay for stuff a few times on the trip, so POS payments are fine for some banks. Always check these things with your bank before you travel, and for goodness sake- TAKE CASH.

Our meeting point was a Holiday Inn near the airport. We had burgers and mojitos and got into our magic trip bus that was taking us to Ada Foah (about an hour and a half out of Central Accra) via shoprite because two hours on a bus is too long without supplies!

We arrived in Aqua Safari in Ada Foah at about 6pm. Driving up to the entrance was full of promise. We checked in and got changed for dinner because food is ALWAYS the priority!

Last time I was in Accra, I tried the banku and tilapia and honestly could not cope with the raw tomato and pepper blend it was served with, so this time I stuck with fufu and okra. A few people ordered the banku and tilapia and the sauce was just as raw but not as offensively raw, just regular raw.

After dinner, everyone was TAYAD, as we didn't all fly in from 50 minutes away. A few of us persevered and went for a freezing swim in the tiny pool. I'm shivering thinking about that swim.

In the morning, I woke up at 5.20, had a quick shower and rallied everyone to catch the sunrise. My rally call led to exactly one person coming out at 6.15. We missed the sunrise. We went by the water, took some pictures and chilled, but at 7, everyone was ready for free breakfast (like I said before, priorities!)

After breakfast, we headed out to the Ghana sailing club (also in Ada Foah). I'd never been sailing before and it was really lovely. The instructor was friendly and sailing was surprisingly intuitive (also really hard on the arms). It was really nice to be on clean water- very different to my kayaking experience on the filthy Lagos water.

We headed back into central Accra and to our apartment in Cantonments. After pizza and recovery (and I'm still burnt by the fact that Ghana has pizza hut), we headed out. First stop- The Republic Bar in Osu. We took regular taxis and got dropped off right on the street the bar was on. It was a very different kind of bar, almost like a street party- especially when I saw women in neon carnivally outfits selling glow sticks.

We started with a disgusting but very awakening ginger and local gin shot and then ordered a round of kokoroko- a cocktail made with hibiscus and local gin (zobo and ogogoro basically), yam chips, chicken and calamari. Everything tasted great and the drinks tasted strong but did not feel strong. We ended with another REALLY REALLY gross shot and then got in another cab to find kizomba- It wasn't meant to be with kizomba so we headed home.

The next day, we were supposed to go on a walking tour but it was way too hot so we chilled and then headed out to a "day party" at about 6pm.I spent a ton of time in the pool and eating and then we headed out for a supposed day party. Got to Suncity Hotel Apartment, paid the cover fee (it's never free to enter anything in Ghana)- and then walked in to an empty ass spot. Talk about a non day- party day- party. We admired the view and ordered drinks (bottles only *sigh*)

We stayed at the day (turned to night) party for a good five hours, had more drinks, some food and headed out to crash a wedding.

The wedding was soooo gorgeous and the music was the best I heard in the entire trip. The Republic bar was serving drinks (that kokoroko drink was chasing me).

Finally, we got to new years eve! After a day of eating Nigerian jollof and Ghanian waakye (pronounced wache sha), we headed out at about 6pm to do the Jamestown tour we had been putting off for two days. On the day we went to the Republic in Osu, our friend assured us that it was "like Lagos Island"- friends- THIS was like Lagos Island. We did the tour, stopping to try their local spirits (never drink in a place that has a curtain instead of a door) and buying different kinds of Ghanian food. At the end of the tour, we ended up with kelewele (a spicy ripe plaintain), kenke (made from steamed corn), fried flat fish (seriously, this fish looked like crisps), shito (spicy pepper and fish mix), kpako shito (made from a spicy green pepper and made to be eaten fairly fresh), and some tins of sardines.

It's interesting that Ghanians have a lot of main meals that are snack like, and made to be eaten not warm.

After that meal, we said goodbye to our lovely tour guide and headed to Tea Baa a cute little bar in Osu, where we had spiked ice tea, chicken kebabs and played a noisy game of Taboo. My team won because apparently I'm an expert guesser.

We left Tea Baa and headed to a house party which turned out to be an intimate family party- yikes. The family was super nice and the food was sooo good, so we sat on couches in the driveway, watched fireworks and got pleasantly drowsy.

At 2.30am, we went to a club called Twist, where again, we paid to get in. It was PACKED. Apparently, it was full of Ahaspora (The Ghanian name for IJGBs) because locals were at home with their families, having lovely parties that were being crashed by foreigners :)

at 4am, I could physically not stand anymore and headed home.

The next day was spent in a montage of of eating, lying down, watching Dark and eating. At 7, we started playing lemon until we started dropping like flies and heading to bed.