TravelDay buddy

Yewande Clarke

@longmemory · she/her · New Orleans, United States

Go to the place, read the plaque, then sit down for a while.

  • Remembrance
  • Black history
  • Live music
  • Medium pace
  • Mid range

Yewande Clarke is a drawn, fictional companion written by TravelDay. The places below are real entries in our catalogue, and each one names the guide it came from.

How Yewande Clarke travels

I travel around the Atlantic. Ghana, Bahia, Rio, the Gulf coast. These are places joined by one long and specific history, and standing in them is not the same as reading about them.

I plan these trips carefully and I keep them short. Two of these days are heavy. I book the afternoons free, I do not stack three memorial sites in one morning, and I have learned to leave a full day at the end for nothing.

The rest of the time I am doing ordinary holiday things. Music, markets, a long lunch. Remembrance and enjoying yourself are not opposites, and the people who live in these cities do both at once every day of the week.

  • Heritage
  • History
  • Museums
  • Music
  • Walking

Cities Yewande Clarke keeps going back to

  • New Orleans

    United States

    Home, and the only place in the United States where Sunday afternoon sounds like this.

  • Rio de Janeiro

    Brazil

    More Africans landed at the wharf here than at any other port in the Americas, and the neighbourhood above it is still singing.

  • São Paulo

    Brazil

    For one museum, and then for the food, which is the best in the hemisphere and I will argue about it.

  • Lisbon

    Portugal

    The other end of the same shipping route, and a city that is only now putting up the signs.

Heritage journeys Yewande Clarke follows

Choosing a journey is an interest. It says nothing about who anyone is.

  • Atlantic slavery: places of remembrance · The Atlantic trade had two shores. This journey follows places of remembrance from West Africa to the Americas and Europe.
  • African American freedom and abolition · Escape routes, free towns and the houses of people who refused. A journey through the long fight to end slavery in the United States.
  • Afro-Brazilian Bahia · Brazil received more Africans than anywhere else on earth, and Bahia is where that is most visible. Nine places that hold it, in Salvador, the Recôncavo, Alagoas and São Paulo.

What Yewande Clarke recommends

New Orleans

  • Congo Square · Sight

    Enslaved people were permitted to gather and play here on Sundays. Every drum line in this city comes back to this patch of ground. Go on a Sunday afternoon.

  • Backstreet Cultural Museum · Museum

    Mardi Gras Indian suits, social aid and pleasure club history, jazz funerals. Small, personal and run by the people it is about.

  • Louis Armstrong Park · Sight

    Congo Square sits inside it. Walk in from Rampart Street and take the long way round.

  • Café du Monde · Cafe

    Yes it is the obvious one. Go at four in the morning when the queue is gone and it is just the night people.

    • Seen in Time Out New Orleans. Time Out calls it a New Orleans legend, serving beignets and chicory coffee since 1862

  • Commander's Palace · Restaurant

    The Garden District institution. Weekday lunch is the version a person can actually afford.

  • Peche Seafood Grill · Restaurant

    Whole fish over coals. I bring visitors here on their first night and it does all the work for me.

  • Brennan's Restaurant · Restaurant

    Breakfast, in the French Quarter, taken seriously. Order the eggs and do not skip the coffee.

Rio de Janeiro

  • Valongo Wharf · Sight

    The wharf where hundreds of thousands of people were landed. It is an open site in a working part of the city. Go with a guide from the neighbourhood.

  • Pedra do Sal · Sight

    The steps above the old wharf where samba was worked out. Monday night there is a roda here and it belongs to the neighbourhood, not to you.

  • Memorial dos Pretos Novos · Museum

    A burial ground found under a family's house during building work. Small, quiet, and the hardest room in Rio.

  • Museu de Arte do Rio · Museum

    On the square above the port. Go after the wharf, not before, and it will make more sense.

  • Confeitaria Colombo · Cafe

    Mirrors, tiles and pastry from 1894. A soft landing after a hard morning downtown.

    • Seen in Wanderlog. Ranked second on Wanderlog's best places to eat in Rio de Janeiro

  • Adega Pérola · Restaurant

    A Copacabana bar with a counter full of little dishes. Point, eat, repeat.

Sao Paulo

  • Museu Afro-Brasil · Museum

    In Ibirapuera park. Five hundred years of Brazil told from the other side, and the best single museum on this subject anywhere.

Plans you can copy

Accra, Cape Coast and Elmina

4 nights · November to March · Slow pace · Mid range

Four nights on the Ghanaian coast. Two of the days are heavy and I have left the afternoons after them empty on purpose. Almost nothing here is in the TravelDay catalogue yet, so most stops are marked for cataloguing.

  1. Day 1

    Accra

  2. Day 2

    Cape Coast

    • Cape Coast Castle · Morning · Journey stop

      Guided tours through the dungeons. Fees are set by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board and change. Take the tour and then take an hour on the wall alone.

    • Assin Manso Ancestral Slave River Park · Afternoon · Journey stop

      An open-air site inland, usually taken on the way to or from the coast. This is a place people come to for their own reasons. Be quiet in it.

  3. Day 3

    Elmina

    • Elmina Castle · Morning · Journey stop

      Older than Cape Coast and harder. Guided tours daily, fees published by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board. One castle a day is enough.

    • Elmina fishing harbour · Afternoon · Walk

      Hundreds of painted boats, right below the castle wall. The town is alive and it helps to remember that.

  4. Day 4

    Back to Accra with nothing planned

    • Makola Market · Morning · Market

      Loud, enormous and entirely about today. Go early and buy something to cook.

    • Jamestown · Afternoon · Walk

      The lighthouse, the boxing gyms and the sea. Walk it with a local guide, not alone with a camera.

Four nights in Salvador da Bahia

4 nights · September to November · Medium pace · Mid range

The old upper town, the museums that tell it properly, and a day out to Cachoeira. Salvador is not a catalogued city on TravelDay, so most of these stops are flagged for the catalogue and none of them are meals.

  1. Day 1

    Pelourinho

    • Historic Centre of Salvador de Bahia · Afternoon · Walk

      A living neighbourhood with a heavy tourist trade. Ordinary city care, especially after dark.

    • Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Pretos · Afternoon · Journey stop

      Built over a century by a Black lay brotherhood who were not allowed in the other churches. Active, small charge, weekday hours.

  2. Day 2

    Two museums

    • Museu Afro-Brasileiro · Morning · Journey stop

      University hours, sometimes closed at weekends. The Carybé panels alone are worth the trip.

    • Casa do Benin · Afternoon · Journey stop

      A short walk from the Rosário dos Pretos church. The link back across the ocean, kept deliberately open.

  3. Day 3

    A working fort and a national museum

    • Forte de Santo Antônio Além do Carmo · Afternoon · Journey stop

      A working building rather than a museum. Training times vary by academy and are posted at the fort. Ask before you film anyone.

    • Museu Nacional da Cultura Afro-Brasileira · Evening · Journey stop

      Ticketing and free days are on the museum's own site. Check before you go, it has changed more than once.

  4. Day 4

    Out to the Recôncavo

    • Cachoeira · Morning · Journey stop

      About a hundred kilometres inland. The Boa Morte festival falls in August and the town fills. It is the sisterhood's event, not a show.

    • São Félix · Afternoon · Walk

      Across the iron bridge. Cigar town, river town, almost nobody there on a weekday.

Rio and São Paulo, four nights

4 nights · April to June · Medium pace · Mid range

The port district in Rio, where the largest single arrival point in the Americas is now an open archaeological site, and then one day in São Paulo for the museum that holds the whole story.

  1. Day 1

    The wharf

    • Valongo Wharf · Morning · Journey stop

      An open site in a working part of the city, usually seen with a local guide. Take the guide. The stones do not explain themselves.

    • Pedra do Sal · Afternoon · Walk

      Up the steps behind the wharf. Samba was worked out here, in the houses of the people who had just been landed below.

    • Confeitaria Colombo · Evening · Meal

      Ten minutes and a hundred years away. Sit upstairs.

      • Seen in Wanderlog. Ranked second on Wanderlog's best places to eat in Rio de Janeiro

  2. Day 2

    Two small rooms and one big one

    • Memorial dos Pretos Novos · Morning · Museum

      A burial ground found under a house. Twenty minutes inside is enough and it will stay with you longer than that.

    • Museu de Arte do Rio · Afternoon · Museum

      Go after the memorial. The city's own account of itself reads differently in that order.

    • Café Lamas · Evening · Meal

      Open in Flamengo since 1874. Steak, chips, a cold beer and no ceremony.

  3. Day 3

    A lighter day on purpose

    • Praça Mauá · Morning · Walk

      The square the whole port district now turns on. Skateboards, buskers, and the Valongo stones ten minutes away.

    • Museum of Tomorrow · Afternoon · Museum

      Nothing to do with the journey. That is the point of putting it on day three.

    • Adega Pérola · Evening · Meal

      A counter of small dishes in Copacabana. Stand up, point twice, order a beer.

  4. Day 4

    One museum in São Paulo

    • Museu Afro-Brasil · Morning · Journey stop

      In Ibirapuera park. Three hours minimum. It is the single best room on this subject I have stood in.

    • Pinacotheca of the State of São Paulo · Afternoon · Museum

      Downtown, in an old brick school. Go for the nineteenth century portraits and who is and is not in them.

    • Municipal Market of São Paulo · Evening · Market

      The mortadella sandwich is a tourist thing and I have it every time.

Yewande Clarke is a TravelDay buddy: drawn, fictional, and not an account in the network. Research edition 2026-09-17.