Libreville, Gabon

We managed to sleep through the night so I hoped we had skipped jetlag on this trip. Breakfast was yummy at the Royal Palm - pastries, pancakes, fresh fruit salad and the best scrambled eggs I've had.

We spent most of the morning reorganizing our packs. We had used the carry-on suitcase to pack clothes in case our luggage didn't make it. (We were leaving the carry-on at the Royal Palm to carry souvenirs back at the end of the trip.)

It was Christmas so everything was closed, so we just walked into the centre of Quartier Glass to stretch our legs and see what the neighbourhood was about. Similar to Toronto, Libreville is a city of neighbourhoods. We did have a few objectives -- get local currency (CFAs), find a place for lunch, and buy some bottled water.

We tried a couple of ATMs but no luck, so went to Hotel Le Cristal to see if they would change some Euros. They had an ATM, so we tried that first, and it worked!

Flush with cash we continued on our little tour. Heather spotted a happening place in an old colonial building, with people seated around the 2nd floor balcony. It was starting to drizzle and it looked like a nice place to at least have a coffee so we stopped in. It turns out the salon de thé, Le Pelisson, is a Libreville institution (at least according to the Bradt guide). We decided to have lunch there, even though it was still before noon and a bit early for us, as we hadn't seen much else open. The food wasn't anything to write home about, but the coffee was great and the dessert was amazing.

We figured that was enough for the day and so headed home, stopping in at a gas station convenience store along the way to buy some water.

Cleaned up and then went to the pool area to have a drink and watch the sunset. I was expecting the sun to slant down across the sky, but then remembered that we were close to the equator and so the sun just goes straight up and straight down. The sun got close to the horizon and then disappeared behind some clouds.

So it was now dark and we figured respectable enough to have dinner. However the bar staff said the kitchen wasn't open and to come back later. They weren't really clear on the reason. So we surfed a bit in our room, looked up some back up places that might be open on Christmas. At 7:30 we went back our to the bar and luckily, they were now open for dinner.

I had the grilled langouste and Heather tried the duck with fig. Both were pretty good, our Christmas dinner. We had an early start the next morning so went to bed early around 10pm.