Blogpost for Jan 30, 2019
This morning we woke up at the usual time for breakfast, but it stated drizzling shortly afterwards. After waiting for the rain to clear up, one group of us headed to the beach, and another group left to check out some nearby museums. The museums, were unfortunately, underwhelming. The National Museum of Ghana was mostly closed for renovations, but did have a small exhibit dedicated to historic Ghanaian architecture. The Science and Technology Museum was also pretty barren, save for the remnants of a recently-closed exhibit focused on light. The most important thing we learned from there was that the Ghanaian musical style called “Highlife” was the soundtrack to the Ghanaian independence movement, and continues to be performed today. The National Theatre was also closed, so all we got were a couple of close-up photos of the unique architecture. To cap off our walking tour, we entered the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel to view the contemporary Ghanaian art that they had on display. The luxurious hotel had a number of works recovered from an ambassador hotel that stood in the same place as the Movenpick almost 2 decades ago. A number of small statues, traditional kente, and two-story tall paintings also adorned the walls of the hotel. A hotel employee walked us around the hotel to explain the context of the art and even allowed us into the hotel ballroom to look at several immense paintings there.
The group that headed toward the beach went to the Labadi Hotel and enjoyed a wonderful afternoon relaxing and swimming. There was a lot of trash in the water, which was strange to us because it is a massive tourist area and it was not well maintained. There was also a lot of haggling and pictures being taken of us, which made some of us uncomfortable, but we ignored them and went on with our normal business.
We enjoyed a delicious lunch, however, we were unfortunately overcharged for our food. A few of us tried to get some of our money back but due to the language barrier and the stubbornness of both sides, we ended up giving in and leaving after 20 minutes of arguing.
We came back to the hotel to rest and shower before dinner. After dinner, many of us sat around sharing stories and laughter.
It is Erin’s birthday today and Prof. Abdulai surprised her with a birthday cake!
What a great way to end our last night in Ghana 🇬🇭!