We went to a South African restaurant that is in a hotel/apartment complex that looked new. The menu was pretty robust for a "hotel restaurant". We got some chicken and seafood skewers to share as starters and a bottle of wine. For mains, Robin got short ribs, Dan got the pork chop and I had a steak. Few places here have steak, and even fewer have good South African beef so I figured I'd give it a shot. My steak was actually really good, the best I've had in Ghana for sure. The guys seemed lukewarm about their choices. Robin's ribs were not braised the way we would have expected short ribs to be, so he gave the chef a hard time (which he always gets a kick out of doing).
Saturday morning, we lounged around the house. Francis, the head security guy, had been bugging me about washing our windows. I held him off for awhile with the good ol' "it's harmattan, let's wait til April" spiel, but he was growing impatient. As I'm certain he needed extra money, and we genuinely like him the most of the staff, we said ok. We did, however, choose to limit his access to just the living room and kitchen. We rarely open the windows in any of the bedrooms anyway.
He came at 10:05 (impressively punctual for a Ghanaian) and got started. When he finished with the patio, I was really grateful. Mostly because I had been dreading cleaning the deck after harmattan and trying to de-dust our patio furniture and the grill. He did all of that and washed the screens/sliding glass doors. We had agreed on 75ghs but we were so blown away by the job he did that we gave him 100 (which is still only $25, to keep things in perspective). I might have him do it again in August right before the patio furniture gets packed onto the shipping container.
Saturday afternoon was spent by the pool, with a side of naps. We got cleaned up and went to our favorite restaurant, Bistro 22, for Valentine's Day dinner. They had red lights throughout the restaurant with silk flower petals and heart confetti on the tables. There was a live band playing "love tunes" on a guitar, saxophone and a strangely high-pitched male vocalist. We ate a lot, enjoyed playing a mildly successful version of Name That Tune and got carrot cake to go. Came home and watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith whilst fork-fighting over the slice of cake.
Sunday was equally as relaxing (read as: lazy) while we watched a triple-header of soccer games. Last Valentine's Day, we were living in Mozambique. To refresh your memory... or mine, since I don't recall whether this story was told at the time... Dan offered to plan the activities for the day. When we left the hotel it was humid and over 100 degrees and felt like a sauna. By 4pm the sky turned black and was about to dump. We stopped off at the store for snacks and gave up on dinner reservations. Good thing we did because it was hurricane-worthy. Cars were stuck in the flooded streets, rain was blowing sideways, it was crazy. We took the mattresses and couch cushions onto the floor and built a fort of bedsheets and blankets, created a makeshift charcuterie plate and watched movies.
It was such a spontaneous but fun night that we decided to make it a tradition. So, this year was the 2nd annual fort-build-movie-watching Valentine's Day. We put together some snacks, built a fort with the sofa cushions and dining chairs and climbed in. We watched Bridge of Spies with Tom Hanks and then cleaned up and crashed. Still fun the second time around so I suspect it will continue.
Things have calmed down a lot on this end now that the weddings and things have passed. I expect the next couple of weeks to be pretty uneventful... which is just fine. :)
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