We got up a little late and went for our breakfast, after we had our Covid tests, then decided to try walking the 1.5 miles to the Nairobi Museum. It was a bit of an adventure. We were not unsafe, but we definitely stuck out as tourists and attracted a fair bit of attention from beggars.

I gave a young boy 200 shillings and ended up giving away my (ridiculously priced) hotel coffee to a very persistent woman. I would say 30% of the walk was spent saying “no, sorry” to beggars. The total cost, amusingly, of walking was about 900 shillings (200 to the boy, and 700 in the coffee plus tip). The uber back was 240 shillings 🙂 The streets of Nairobi were also generally chaotic, and rough enough you had to keep a serious eye on your footing. We never felt unsafe, but definitely kept our awareness up.

Anyway, the museum was really interesting – there are tons of cool exhibits, and it was also fun to do some people watching as students, families, and tourists all made their way around the museum. Again, mask enforcement and compliance was nominal. On the bright side, the museum had retooled for a one-way walk through that both guaranteed you saw all the exhibits and helped people stay distanced. They also regulated entry based on exits so it wasn’t too dense in the museum.

We saw early man, learned more about hand axes, learned a ton on kenyan culture, saw great kid-art exhibits, etc. Once done, we walked around the grounds a bit to enjoy a break from being masked before calling an uber, which got us back to the hotel for (after we added a 200 shilling tip) less than half the cost of the outbound journey.

After this we went back to the hotel and got changed and kicked back for about an hour before it was time to go to Cultiva.

Cultiva is LEGIT farm to table, sort of a sprawling restaurant in the midst of a farm field in the Karen neighborhood in Nairobi.

When we left Alfajiri, that was Sofia’s parting gift – “and while you are in Nairobi, you should go to Cultiva – it is amazing, farm to table, and why not?” We had, by this time, learned that we weren’t likely to have better ideas than Sofia’s, so we went as instructed.

We got a driver from the hotel who was fantastic, though his Mercedes hit the same “nice car, rough roads” problem that Eva’s had the previous day. When we finally arrived after some truly painful “high centering the mercedes sedan on speed bumps designed for a land cruiser” moments we were blown away – beautiful lighting and design, incredibly stations set up for pastries, pizza, a bar, etc.

We were led to our table and after delighting in the menu, ordered some amazing cocktails (I had an orange mule made with woodford reserve bourbon – it was incredible). We also had some veggie dips and prawn dumplings for appetizers, and ceviche and some incredible prawn and calamari in broth (replete with house made sourdough baguetter basted in olive oil and heated on a fire grill . . . OMG). All with awesome wine. What a meal. We were too vanquished to attempt desert.

We found our driver and bumped our way back to the hotel, full and happy, and turned in. The next day would be our last in Africa (for this trip).