36 Hours in Lagos, Nigeria: Things to Do and See

• NOK by Alara is a beautifully designed restaurant serving food from across Nigeria and Africa.
• Norma is a popular 24-hour roadside spot serving suya (spiced grilled meat), along with an extensive menu of burgers, wings and fries.
• The Flowershop Café is a breakfast and pastry stop that doubles as an actual flowershop.
• Salma’s offers some of the best Lebanese food in Lagos, right by the waterside.
• RSVP is a friendly, neighborhood spot that offers a compromise between the fancy and the down-to-earth.
• Milk and Honey is a casual cafe, home to the city’s finest meat pies.
• Boho is a speakeasy-inspired nightclub complete with catwalk shows and the occasional surprise musical performance from popular local artists.

• Lekki Conservation Center is a 200-acre nature reserve, home to Africa’s longest canopy walkway.
• Nahous is a multidisciplinary exhibition center and art gallery that serves as a standing memorial to the country’s founding. It also houses Bar 77, which serves cocktails made with local ingredients.
• Jazzhole is a homey record store, book shop, cafe and live arts venue.

• The Delborough is a large luxury hotel in the Victoria Island neighborhood with a fine-dining restaurant that regularly hosts landmark celebrations. Rooms start at around 350,000 naira, or about $251.
• Eko Hotel, in Victoria Island, is probably the city’s most famous hotel thanks to its ballroom which regularly hosts major concerts, conferences and society weddings. Rooms start at 250,000 naira.
• 16/16 is a boutique hotel in Victoria Island with 10 guestrooms, each uniquely designed by local artists and creatives. Rooms start at about 160,000 naira.

• Lagos is a driving city full of big roads and bigger cars. Public transport is unreliable, but ride-hailing services such as Uber, Bolt and the local LagRide are readily available. It may also be more efficient to hire a driver through your hotel for the day. With few sidewalks, walking for even short distances can be very difficult. For personal safety reasons, avoid walking from place to place by yourself, especially at night.
• It’s advisable to have some cash in Lagos, as international cards are not always accepted.

7 p.m. Sample Nigerian food under the stars

After navigating the hectic Murtala Mohammed International Airport, recover in the peaceful garden of NOK by Alara, in a cube-shaped building with geometric latticework in the Victoria Island neighborhood. The restaurant, a local institution, offers a wide variety of dishes from across Nigeria: Try the whole tilapia (34,000 naira, or about $24) and grilled plantain (7,500 naira), perfectly charred on the outdoor grill. Jollof (rice cooked in a flavorsome tomato stew) is an obsessed-over regional favorite, with much discussion over which West African country is home to the best version. NOK’s jollof (10,000 naira), topped with spicy dried and shredded beef, is excellent and will quickly make the airport a faint memory.

9:30 p.m. Wander through a once-abandoned hotel

A five-minute drive from NOK is the Old Federal Palace Hotel, which in 1960 hosted the signing of Nigeria’s Declaration of Independence. Long derelict, it was finally restored in 2025 into a hub of cultural activity — the former lobby and ground floor have been transformed into Nahous, an exhibition space and furniture showroom spotlighting local artists and artisans. There are also stalls by some of the most popular Nigerian fashion brands: Shop Dye Lab’s technicolor prints, and every local skater’s favorite label, waf. Bar 77 in the hotel’s former kitchen, features many of the original fixtures. Grab a cocktail (from 15,000 naira) from its ever-changing menu and head back into the main gallery, or take a seat and enjoy the bar’s sound system.

12 a.m. Sneak a late-night treat

Suya is Nigeria’s favorite cheap and delicious bite: small cuts of generously spiced grilled meats, sliced on the side of the road, served with onions and accompanied by an extra helping of the yaji spice blend that makes the magic happen. Suya has migrated from the northern part of the country to every corner of Nigerian life. Norma offers a 24-hour roadside grill, with spots in both the Ikoyi and Lekki neighborhoods, perfect to visit either on your way home or to fuel the rest of your night. Beef suya (2,000 naira) is the standard, traditional option, but also try the chicken (9,000 naira) or guinea fowl (10,000 naira) suyas.

A local artisan works on wooden sculptures at the Lekki Arts and Crafts Market.

10 a.m. Caffeinate among the flowers, then walk in the treetops

You will need a chai latte (6,000 naira) from the Flowershop Café (which, as the name suggests, is both a flourishing florist and cafe) and your walking shoes before you drive to the impressive Lekki Conservation Center, a serene, 200-acre nature reserve (entry, 6,000 naira), right in the heart of densely urban Lekki, home to tropical vegetation, a mangrove forest and mona monkeys that will certainly steal your lunch if you give them a chance. Weaving through the center is a 1,300-foot-long canopy walkway that is the longest in Africa. From about 23 feet, enjoy a panoramic view of Lagos at its most peaceful.

11:30 a.m. Shop for an artisanal piece

Farther down the same long stretch of road from the Conservation Center is Lekki Arts and Crafts Market, which showcases Nigeria’s rich artisanal culture with quality, handcrafted ornamental sculptures, wood carvings of Lagos landmarks, and furniture you’ll want to ship home. The walkable market is easy to navigate with sellers who are generally warm and welcoming. You’re expected to haggle, but be polite and fair. From there, drive down the same road to Nike Art Gallery, one of West Africa’s largest art galleries. Its owner, Mama Nike Davies-Okundaye, a well-known textiles artist, is often available to answer questions and talk you through the more than 20,000 works on display across the free gallery’s five-story building. The artworks, which are primarily from Nigerian artists but also feature work from across Africa, range from contemporary to historical pieces.

2 p.m. Enjoy a shawarma with a waterside view

Nigerians are passionate about shawarma: Many would even argue that their local version of the spit-roasted meat (which sometimes features a sausage inside the wrap) is better than in the Middle East. That’s a fight for another day. Lagos’s shawarma obsession stems from the city’s prominent Lebanese community, a group that has left a substantial economic and cultural imprint across Nigeria since the early 20th century. Salma’s, by the Victoria Island waterside, has some of the best Lebanese food in Lagos. Ask to sit outside by the restaurant’s pool, order the shawarma sandwich platter (16,000 naira) with stuffed kibbeh (13,000 naira) and a fattoush salad (14,000 naira), and watch the boats speed across Lagos Lagoon.

3:30 p.m. Discover Yoruba fabrics, art and culture

Nigeria has more than 300 different ethnic groups. Sixty percent of the population is split across the three main ethnic groups: the Hausas in the north, the Igbos in the southeast, and the Yorubas in the southwest, where Lagos is. The J. Randle Center for Yorùbá Culture and History (5,000 naira) explores and celebrates the history of the Yoruba, from the group’s ancient religious beliefs to annual traditions. Learn about the history of the different textiles that the Yoruba use to celebrate special events, such as the elegant aso oké fabrics used for weddings. Then linger at artwork depicting day-to-day life across the southwest, and study the culture’s literary and music traditions.

5 p.m. Browse the classics

You could argue that Nigeria’s most significant cultural exports are its music and literary traditions. Indulge in both at Jazzhole — a beloved vinyl store, book shop and cafe in Ikoyi for 35 years, offering a place to meet, relax and discover music from across Africa and the diaspora. Take your time browsing the stacks of records, archival material, books and posters featuring legendary concerts and iconic moments in Nigerian pop culture. At the back is the cafe, usually stocked with fresh fruit juices, coffees and freshly baked cakes. It’s also where Jazzhole hosts regular live gigs and author readings (check its social media to see what’s coming up).

8 p.m. Fuel up for the night ahead

The culinary heart of Lagos, Victoria Island offers diverse restaurants, including the Latin-American-inspired SLoW, the made-for-Instagram aesthetics of the Italian-meets-Japanese Vici, more down-to-earth joints like Dough Pizza Bar, with its New York-style pizzas, and taco-propelled evenings at La Taverna. You can’t go wrong with the established neighborhood favorite RSVP, with its photo-lined interior and D.J. spinning in the backyard. Find an extensive menu of sushi, burgers, steaks, pastas and dumplings (between 40,000 to 70,000 naira for most main dishes).

11 p.m. Embrace enjoyment

Every weekend, millions of Lagos residents can be found wrapped in traditional attire at weddings, rent-a-canopy street parties and at nightclubs. Be kind and ask the right person the right question, and you will be extended an invitation to an owambe — a Yoruba term for a community party. From dinner, get into the party spirit at Boho, a speakeasy-inspired venue whose nights are punctuated with live instrumentalists and dancers well into the early morning. Club hopping is a city pastime, so wander over to Mr. Panther with its illuminated red ceiling or the newly refurbished restaurant-turned-club ZaZa. If you’re looking for something more relaxed, take a lift up to the rooftop bar at Kaly, where a wandering saxophonist is sometimes on hand to serenade your evening.

Outside the J. Randle Center for Yorùbá Culture and History stands a towering monument to Eyo — a Yoruba masquerade tradition featuring masked figures representing ancestral spirits.

9:15 a.m. Find calm in a cathedral

If you wake up early enough, visit the beautiful Cathedral Church of Christ in the Lagos Island neighborhood for the early morning service. Ambitious, perhaps, after a big night out, but you won’t be alone: A fact of Lagos life is that both its dance floors and churches are full, and with many of the same people. The trip is worth it alone to see the cathedral’s grand exterior up close, right in the heart of Lagos Island’s bustling business district, which features some of the city’s Afro-Brazilian architecture. As a prominent church, it’s used to welcoming guests, but only go if you’re planning to stay for the whole service, usually about two hours.

12 p.m. Unwind by the sea

Recover from your night out with a day at the beach. Before you go, grab a local favorite snack: a subtly seasoned meat pie with fried minced beef or chicken, potatoes and vegetables, encased in flaky, buttery pastry. Head to your nearest Milk and Honey cafe (there is one in Lekki and one in Ikoyi) and fill a bag with meat or chicken pies (3,520 naira), sausage rolls (2,530 naira), and little doughnut-style bites known as puff puff (1,430 naira). With your goodies, head to Tarkwa Bay Beach, accessible via a 15-minute boat ride (9,000 naira) from a number of jetty locations in Victoria Island and Ikoyi. Stretch out, catch the sun and read the book you bought at Jazzhole while enjoying the vast Lagos coastline.