We arrived in Ivory Coast – or Côte d’Ivoire – on June 13th. We arrived in Abidjan, which was called the “Manhattan of West Africa” to us by a speaker on the ship, and while I’m not sure I agree with the statement (at least in the one that that image conjures up), I can agree that it is more of a city than many of the other cities/villages that we saw in this part of Africa. This is not to say it wasn’t impressive. Indeed, it’s a big city. It is the fourth most populous city in Africa, with about 4.7million people living there. So perhaps the name is more fitting than I gave it credit for. It is also the city with the third biggest French speaking population anywhere in the world so it’s probably more appropriate to refer to the country as Côte d’Ivoire (pronounced coat div-wah) than the Ivory Coast, though either works.
Abidjan is the country’s economic capital but not the political capital. That honor belongs to Yamoussoukro. For the most part, my understanding is that Yamoussokro is mostly known for its extremely large church. The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro surpasses even St Peter’s Basilica, with an exterior area of 30,000 square meters. It can hold 18,000 worshippers but apparently is rarely full and in fact appears empty the majority of the time. It’s worth looking up, as it does look impressive. Of course, we didn’t see it, because we were in Abidjan.
Abidjan also has a big church – though not nearly as big. It’s also much more modern looking – and was one that I visited while in port. Let me just jump into that… for our visit today, we didn’t have an excursion so it amounted to just wandering around a little. The ship had a shuttle that dropped people off in the city center, and I took that to wander around. Ryan opted to not join me so I connected with a fellow ship guest (Holly) and we wandered together. (Better to wander a new city you know very little about with somebody than to do it alone!)
The location the shuttle dropped us off at was pretty much just a typical city center, surrounded by tall buildings in what appeared to be a commercial district. We began walking in the direction that some people had told us was a large church. Holly had some clothing donations she wanted to make. It turns out that the church we walked to was St. Paul’s Cathedral, a Roman Catholic cathedral that was built in 1985. According to Wikipedia, “The cost of implementing this modern architectural edifice, reputedly the second largest church on the African continent (as of 2002), and one of the largest cathedrals in the world, was estimated at $12 million.” You can see just by looking at it from the outside how modern and unique it looks.
The church was definitely impressive in its size. It can accommodate 5,000 devotees, with seating for 3,500, with the remainder being standing space.
The inside was beautiful with stained glass windows everywhere, with each of the of the panels supposedly being related to the life of St. Paul.
Really, the church was the whole visit in Côte d’Ivoire. Walking along the street we had to keep crossing the street because sidewalks would end or holes would prevent us from going any further. It was definitely hot, and we decided to cool off with a beer after we returned back to the shuttle meeting spot. I had a local beer.
After our adult beverages, we got back on the shuttle and headed back. No shopping or anything today, which worked for me!