A Day on Our Own in Cape Town
Our day started with a great buffet breakfast at our hotel. The day is a beautiful one with clearing skies and temperatures in the 60s. Our hotel is right on the water and from the restaurant we could see Table Mountain, a prominent landmark in Cape Town. It was too cold for us to enjoy the infinity pool but the sea gulls found it perfect.
After breakfast we met our tour guides for the week, Jameel and Tina. Both have many years experience acting as tour guides in South Africa. Jameel is from Cape Town and Tina is from Virginia Beach. They went over how the tour will operate and answered questions. Our group has only 15 guests and Charlie is the only one under 21 so I’m sure this will offer some interesting and fun times. We had the day on our own today to explore Cape Town. Jameel and Tina gave us suggestion on where we might visit and offered some good places to eat. They did not steer us wrong. I do need to get better pictures of both of our guides however.
We decided to hear over to the nearby V&A Waterfront where we found a traditional mall, but also found shops selling beautiful handmade African merchandise, great places to eat, live music and a lovely aquarium. We spent over an hour it the aquarium.
We spent much of the afternoon exploring the shops including The African Trading Post which is part museum and part shop on 4 floors of an old building. It contained thousands of African artifacts, many of which are antiques. It was an incredible place to browse and we even found a few things to bring home.
We had lunch at a fun open market called Time Out with booths selling an eclectic mix of food from around the world surrounding communal tables where everyone could enjoy their food selections. I had a delicious wage bao bun, Ruth had a beet hummus salad, David had lamb meatballs with lentils, BJ had to try the Buffalo chicken wings and Charlie was thrilled they had wood fired pizza. The pizza was really good too, as was everything else. So far, the South African food has been pretty amazing and surprisingly inexpensive.
After lunch we wandered around the waterfront for a while and listened to some fun music. Charlie even had a chance to participate.
By mid afternoon we were ready to head back to the hotel for a rest but for dinner we headed back to the V&A Waterfront for a traditional African restaurant called Karibu that our guides highly recommended. While we didn’t try the most adventurous items on the menu, like antelope and ostrich, we did have some delicious traditional African dishes. Our server, Loelu was delightful and helpful. Charlie fell asleep shortly after we sat down but awoke in time to eat and to see some of the wonderful young street performers who can into the restaurant to perform. Ruth and I both found the African music and dance pretty emotional.
We were seated too far away from where the entire group performed some of the most moving pieces but they came around to the table next to ours and sang an African version of Happy Birthday which gave us an opportunity to see all of the performers up close.
It was a great day. Our organized tour gets underway right after breakfast so we need to get to bed early.