What to do in Sao Tome City
There is plenty to explore when trying to figure out what to do in Sao Tome City for a day while you’re visiting the island. I recommend making this your final stop before flying out to Principe or back home.
If you want to know how much everything costs, check out the Sao Tome Budget post for details.
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Chocolatiers
Claudio Corallo
If you’re interested in visiting the Claudio Corallo chocolate factory, the first thing you should do is head straight here to their shop before 12:30pm (when they close). You will need to make a reservation for their 4pm tour in person (Monday-Saturday). I tried to call to book via WhatsApp but they didn’t have their number registered there; I didn’t have a local sim. When I asked via Instagram to book, I was told to go to their offices… in any case, we didn’t reach their shop until 1pm and so I suggest you make this a priority if you’re interested.
Diogo Vaz
On the other hand, if you do miss Claudio Corallo’s hours, you can visit Diogo Vaz just down the road. For us, this was more interesting because we had also visited their plantation on the island. The patisseries are works of art and are delicious. I highly recommend getting cake and coffee here. Stock up on some chocolate bars too.
CACAU: Cultural Hub
Art gallery, museum, and cafe, the Casa das Artes Criação Ambiente e Utopias (CACAU) is the brainchild of Roca Sao Joao de Angolares’s João Carlos Silva. In fact, besides seeing him at Roca Sao Joao de Angolares, we ran into him at CACAU and again at another bar in the early evening.
The museum is by donation and gives a great history (with English translations) of the island and its inhabitants. Most interesting to us was the map of all the plantations in Sao Tome. Literally the whole island was different farms!
On Thursday nights, CACAU serves a buffet of traditional Santomean food accompanied by live music. If you’re not sick of fish at this point, I recommend eating here! However, we were craving some pasta and pizza at this point and instead just visited for 10 minutes in the evening to check it out.
In the building next to CACAU is a small souvenir shop that you may want to pop your head into. Google makes you think it’s a shopping mall but it’s literally a single shop (or at least that’s all we found).
Where to Eat and Drink
BBC
Art gallery below and bar upstairs, we stumbled across BBC while on our way to the chocolatiers. We just had a drink here but there is food available as well.
Pico Mocambo
This rum bar is set inside an old house on the 2nd story. It’s a unique place to get a drink. You can order pizza from the nearby pizzeria and they will deliver it to Pico Mocambo. The famous rum drink is called “Gravaninha” and come in a variety of versions like ginger, cucumber, star fruit, coconut, and pineapple.
90 Graus Esplanada Bar
We were pretty tired of fish on our last day and so we opted for pizza at 90 Graus Esplanada Bar on our last night. The pizzas were good and we enjoyed it.
Papa Figo
For a range of veg options for lunch or dinner, visit Papa Figo. The restaurant is popular and got crowded when we visited.
Sites to see when Walking Around
As you walk around you’ll be sure to come across some cool buildings. Some don’t have official names on google maps so you’re juts going to have to trust me.
Check out this mural here.
And another one here.
I loved this display at this clothing shop.
And this bar was super interesting. Unfortunately it was closed when we visited.
The promenade is literally falling apart in places, but you’ll likely come across it as you explore Sao Tome City.
The Parque da UCLA has an interesting display, great for pictures.
We stopped in at this library/art gallery as we were walking towards the fort-turned-National Museum. I don’t remember why we didn’t go into the museum tbh.
You’ll come across the market and church as you walk around as well.
Where to stay
We stayed just one night at Residencial Des. It was a basic room, though there was AC which was great. However, the wifi wasn’t working when we were there. To Instead of Residencial Des, you can stay at one of the nicer hotels like Omali, though it is outside town. Pestana São Tomé and Pestana Miramar São Tomé are both well-located and also good options for hotels in Sao Tome City.
Got any other suggestions on what to do in Sao Tome City? Let me know in the comments!