Today we  – the whole team of 7 – minus one, drove to the capital of Côte d’Ivoire. This was the place we started to go when we had the bus incident. It took us about 3 hours… Blah! But it was good to see the country side and we had good conversation and fun.

There were two hotels we looked at – both were not in the quality of construction we would expect to mimic. After that we went to the Basilica there. It is actually owned by the Vatican and the Pope comes there. It was a very  – strange  – building – huge Classical Roman  like building, but stripped down of most of its classical detailing. It mainly felt out of place in the poor African surroundings.

Here are some fun facts:

Location: Yamoussoukro, the Capital city

“Our lady of peace”…apart of Vatican City.  The tallest church in the world. 158 meters

7400 square meters of glass – the largest area of glass in the world.

7,000 seating and 11,000 standing capacity. When it opened there were over than 200,000 people in attendance.

Largest dome in the world.

 

After a beautiful afternoon, we had a three hour drive back to the hotel.

Now I sit in a car stuck in traffic with a driver that I can’t communicate with more than a couple French words and numbers I have in my repertoire. I am on my way to the airport to fly to South Africa. Everyone else is leaving to fly home tonight. It has been a long day, but I have enjoyed seeing what surrounds the Côte d’Ivoire!