Friday’s Featured Food: Rabbit 🐇On New Year’s Eve At Chez Laetitia in Abidjan, Ivory Coast 🇨🇮

“Another year over; a new one just begun” – John Lennon.

I found myself back in Ivory Coast at the end of 2024, and this is where Marek and I celebrated New Year’s Eve 2024 and New Year’s Day 2025.

I had backpacked through Abidjan and Grand Bassam before, back in 2018. On that trip, I got an online visa for Ivory Coast and stayed in the swanky Ibis Plateau Hotel in Abidjan. I also first met Dayo Williams who was my guide on that trip. Dayo met up with me yet again to take Marek on tours and then he joined us for a New Year’s Eve drink, late afternoon on 31st December 2024.

We had a beer together to toast the end of 2024 at our hotel, the Hotel Residential Tourist, which I will write about soon! The Hotel is for sale, so I will review it and also write about how you can BUY IT!

Then as it got closer to the midnight countdown, Marek and I decided to head to our hat-trick night local, Bar Chez Laetitia.

We had dined out here at Bar Chez Laetitia on our first night in Ivory Coast on this jaunt, December 29th and got to know Esther, the waitress and bar lady who came from Ghana and spoke English. I still haven’t been to Ghana!

Then on December 30th I had popped in for a quick beer at Bar Chez Laetitia and to enquire about booking a table for New Year’s Eve. I wouldn’t have needed to make a reservation actually. Just come and join the party, there’ll be a table for you, they said.

In fact, we sat at the same table thrice, three nights in a row. On New Year’s Eve, in the run up to midnight all seemed quiet. We ordered up a bottle of red wine. Marek drinks wine like Leonardo Da Vinci. 50% wine and 50% water. I’ve decided to copy him. If a 71 year old can still backpack the world after a lifetime of travelling, drinking, and even smoking then I will give it a try too. A popular dish in Ivory Coast is rabbit, so we ordered it. A Hopping farewell to 2024.

As the rabbit was taking a while to come, Marek remarked that our bunny rabbit is still hopping around the field!! Jokes loyal at 2024 was coming to a close. It was a year where I had backpacked to seven new countries – Gagauzia, Cameroon, Gabon, Sao Tome i Principe, Seborga, Burkina Faso and Niger. I had also fakepacked Mali at the airport!

The rabbit arrived around 22.30 p.m. It was well cooked and I realised it was the third time I’d eaten rabbit since 2017. That first time in 2017, I backpacked in Malta🇲🇹 and had rabbit in the famous Caffe Cordina bar and restaurant downtown in Valletta. I never actually wrote about the Rabbit in Malta in 2017, so here are some photos from it…

Then in 2024 itself, I also had rabbit. This was my second time and I ate it in Seborga as it is the national dish there. Again for the memories – eating rabbit in Seborga.

And now as the year drew to a close, we were eating rabbit in Ivory Coast! The rest of the photos here are from Cocody, Abidjan, Ivory Coast.

The news you probably didn’t want to hear – the rabbit was average and rabbit is always average at best for me. I’m not a big fan of biting miniscule bits of average meat off of tiny bones. Life is to experience things so we did it. I won’t care if I don’t eat rabbit again. The Malta, Seborga and Ivory Coast experiences are enough rabbit for me now.

Plus the original Starogard Girl used a bunny 🐰 rabbit on her What’s App avatar. The saucy minx was double entendres on the brain. After the rabbit was finished, the mood was subdued, even at 23.30 p.m. I saw no signs that we were about to enter 2025. All was calm…

“It’s oh so quiet; it’s oh so still” – Bjork.

At 23:59 I got my own phone out and did our own countdown. All was so quiet on New Year’s Eve, I put my feet up. Ivory Coast is relaxed and safe.

Then suddenly at midnight, Ivory Coast finally went wild. The party started. Fireworks filled the night sky. Our bargirls started to dance.

We all lost our inhibitions. Even I started dancing! It was brilliant. I pondered on where I had spent New Year’s Eve the previous few years.

It had been 2018 in Beirut, Lebanon 🇱🇧. 2019 in my mate Neal’s flat in Bournemouth, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿. 2020 we had a lock down mask loyal in our flat on Ulica Tamka in Warszawa, Poland 🇵🇱. In 2021, I had a wild one at Beefy! Beef 🍖 Island 🏝 in British Virgin Islands 🇻🇬. In 2022, I was in The Bahamas 🇧🇸. In 2023, I had just arrived back in Brussels, Belgium 🇧🇪 after backpacking 🎒 Sierra Leone 🇸🇱 away.

What a wild and fun end to 2024 and the start of 2025. When u looked back on my travels, I also realised this was my FIRST ever New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in Africa. I astounded myself with that fact. It meant I had now celebrated New Year in Europe, North America, South America, Caribbean, Middle East, Asia, Oceania and Africa.

Here was the place where we celebrated 2025 arriving:

Here are some videos from New Year’s Eve and Day in Abidjan, Ivory Coast: