This morning I woke up and went up to the 4th floor of the Hotel des Milles Collines to the Panorama restaurant for the free breakfast that was repeatedly advertised to me (the guy who did my wakeup call even reminded me). The restaurant is supposed to have really good views of Kigali, hence the name. Despite those forewarnings, I was vastly unprepared. After eating beans and plantains for two weeks, I was overwhelmed by a giant table of danishes and pastries (apricot, papaya, apple, custard), scrambled, boiled, poached eggs and omeletes, crepes with nutella, butter, or cheese, bowls of all flavors of those little wax covered Babel cheeses, sausage, bacon..basically every breakfast food imaginable. So after that (and by that I mean the existential experience during which I was levitated off my chair while eating a mango pastry), I decided I am not allowed whine to myself about being hungry for at least a week. My waitress also brought me a big, personal pot of coffee which was sooo good. The coffee beans here are unreal.
I met a cool South African man on the way to the Kigali airport and we shared a taxi together. His daughter is a doctor in Capetown and he had lots of cool stories about life in africa. We even ended up coinicidentally sitting beside each other on the plane. The woman sitting on the other side of me was this gorgeous woman from Burundi who had a really pretty African cloth outfit. I complimented her on the fabric and on our flight, she pointed out Lake Tanganyika (which branches off the Nile she said) and other African landmarks during out flight south. Then, our lunch was prepared by the chefs at Hotel des Milles Collines and it was the best plane food ever. I got the pastry encrusted tilapia with dill and cucumber, tomato and basil salad. Tilapia is grown (or raised?) in Lake Kivu in Rwanda, so it was fresh and really good. Mom-I told you that flying South African is like what I would imaging flying in the US in the 1950s was like. The stewardesses are gorgeous African women with colorful eye shadow and long flowing hair and they give you tons of packs of biscuits, crackers, even blocks of cheese, and cans of sodas. I never wanted to leave. My VIP treatment continued in Joburg when I got to the sun intercontinental, which is by far the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in, but was probably necessarily as a young single female in Joburg. These last 24 hours have been a stark contrast to the last 2 weeks (and the 4 weeks to come), but I will enjoy it while it lasts--including using lots of scented lotions and soaps before I re-enter malarial mosquito country.
I met a cool South African man on the way to the Kigali airport and we shared a taxi together. His daughter is a doctor in Capetown and he had lots of cool stories about life in africa. We even ended up coinicidentally sitting beside each other on the plane. The woman sitting on the other side of me was this gorgeous woman from Burundi who had a really pretty African cloth outfit. I complimented her on the fabric and on our flight, she pointed out Lake Tanganyika (which branches off the Nile she said) and other African landmarks during out flight south. Then, our lunch was prepared by the chefs at Hotel des Milles Collines and it was the best plane food ever. I got the pastry encrusted tilapia with dill and cucumber, tomato and basil salad. Tilapia is grown (or raised?) in Lake Kivu in Rwanda, so it was fresh and really good. Mom-I told you that flying South African is like what I would imaging flying in the US in the 1950s was like. The stewardesses are gorgeous African women with colorful eye shadow and long flowing hair and they give you tons of packs of biscuits, crackers, even blocks of cheese, and cans of sodas. I never wanted to leave. My VIP treatment continued in Joburg when I got to the sun intercontinental, which is by far the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in, but was probably necessarily as a young single female in Joburg. These last 24 hours have been a stark contrast to the last 2 weeks (and the 4 weeks to come), but I will enjoy it while it lasts--including using lots of scented lotions and soaps before I re-enter malarial mosquito country.
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