Date: Feb 3, 2007 4:54 PM
Subject: Saturday, February 03, 2007
Saturday, February 03, 2007
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA DAY II
We had to meet the bus at five to eight this morning. It was breakfast in bed again. This roughing it has to stop. Our butler brought me blueberry pancakes and coffee. I can’t eat much that early. Then it was off to the city tour and Table Mountain.
This is South Africa’s largest city. Including the surrounding areas, they claim it is 4.5 million people. I don’t see that is possible, it doesn’t look 100th the size of Chicago, but who knows. It is also the oldest city. Only about 1/4 the population is black African.
We had seen much of the downtown area yesterday. It was very clean and graffiti was hard to find. There were some interesting looking high rise buildings that looked like Australia and definitely not the US. The most interesting area was around the dock, called the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. It encompasses a large area and you can find most goods, services, restaurants, and entertainment there. They took a usually ugly dock area and made it look very nice, similar to Australia.
Next it was on to the Table Mountain Cable car. We drove up some altitude before reaching the base of the mountain and the cable car. We went up elevators to enter the cable cars. These cars are quite unique. They are round and shaped much like a soup pot. We were they held about 1500 gallons of water for ballast to keep them steady. Inside, there were no seats. Everyone had to stand and they packed them pretty full. As we started to climb, the floor started to rotate. It kept going slowly round in circles, giving everyone a 360 degree view. The climbing 
speed was very fast. The views on the way up were spectacular. No one should ever come here and miss this. Once on top, you had to be here. The pictures do not do it justice. There were three different trails to walk. All were paved and took 15 minutes to 45 minutes to walk if you did not stop.
There were little animals running around in the rocks. They looked a little like the Marmots in Colorado but were smaller. They are not rodents. They are called Dassie. They said their
closest relative was the elephant. They claimed they had little trunk like things on their faces and their front feet were shaped like an elephant’s. They didn’t look that way to me but they were cute.
Once back at the dock we walked into the closest shopping center. I wanted an additional flash memory card for the PC and Bobbi forgot her pocket size calculator. We could find only one store carrying the flash memory but the prices were very high and I
gave it a pass. We did find the calculator though. After waking around a short time we went back to the ship for lunch.
Bobbi still could not get her shopping fill so she went back after lunch. I had better things to do. This evening we are supposed to meet ten other couples at an African restaurant for dinner.
At about 7:30 this evening we walked to the back of the ship where the end of the dock was and got a taxi. It took about 15 minutes to get to the restaurant. It was a metered taxi and with Bobbi giving way too much tip, the price came to 50 Rand. That’s about $7.14 US.
We walked into the front door and just inside were heavy iron gates we had to open to get through. The entire place was decorated by real Africans. We were led to the second floor, up a round staircase, of what must have been a large old house. It would not have met code in any place we knew of in the US. It felt as if the railing would go any second. It moved and creaked so much we were afraid to hold on to it. Upstairs there were a few rooms all decorated in different African themes. We were in a large one with Egyptian motif. The furniture was simple and seemed old.
It seems there is a lot of illness going around the ship. Our original ten couples were now seven people. The couple that invited us, a young man that now lived and worked there and who was a friend of that couples daughter, and another couple that had also been on the ship for part of the world cruise last year.
To start things off we were informed their credit card machine was broken and they would only take $ Rand. One couple had none and borrowed from us. Ha, ha. Wait until they find out we are from Chicago. Wait until they find out what the vigorish per minute is. Wait until they find out how we handle late payment.
The menu was a typewritten piece of paper. Everything was served family style. They just brought everything on the menu. If there was something you wanted more of, just ask. They would keep bringing until we said stop. While it was a great experience and fun, I would not trade the food for the ship’s food. Kiddies, you don’t want to trade African food for mama’s or daddy’s cooking. Some of it was pretty good though and nothing terrible except possibly some fish balls wrapped in foil. One lady made an awful face and said don’t eat it. As we could find no reason to doubt her, we didn’t. We will check tomorrow and see if she is well. After dinner, a large group of waitress, all wearing old African dress, came in singing and playing loud drums. That was good.
We love doing different things. Again, this was a great experience and everyone at our table was terrific to talk to and be with. I would do it again in a second.
There are a lot more things to see and do here. We have to come again. All the local people have been very friendly, as they were in Namibia. This is another great town. If I had to live here, I could very easily.
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA DAY II
We had to meet the bus at five to eight this morning. It was breakfast in bed again. This roughing it has to stop. Our butler brought me blueberry pancakes and coffee. I can’t eat much that early. Then it was off to the city tour and Table Mountain.This is South Africa’s largest city. Including the surrounding areas, they claim it is 4.5 million people. I don’t see that is possible, it doesn’t look 100th the size of Chicago, but who knows. It is also the oldest city. Only about 1/4 the population is black African.
We had seen much of the downtown area yesterday. It was very clean and graffiti was hard to find. There were some interesting looking high rise buildings that looked like Australia and definitely not the US. The most interesting area was around the dock, called the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. It encompasses a large area and you can find most goods, services, restaurants, and entertainment there. They took a usually ugly dock area and made it look very nice, similar to Australia.
Next it was on to the Table Mountain Cable car. We drove up some altitude before reaching the base of the mountain and the cable car. We went up elevators to enter the cable cars. These cars are quite unique. They are round and shaped much like a soup pot. We were they held about 1500 gallons of water for ballast to keep them steady. Inside, there were no seats. Everyone had to stand and they packed them pretty full. As we started to climb, the floor started to rotate. It kept going slowly round in circles, giving everyone a 360 degree view. The climbing 
speed was very fast. The views on the way up were spectacular. No one should ever come here and miss this. Once on top, you had to be here. The pictures do not do it justice. There were three different trails to walk. All were paved and took 15 minutes to 45 minutes to walk if you did not stop.There were little animals running around in the rocks. They looked a little like the Marmots in Colorado but were smaller. They are not rodents. They are called Dassie. They said their
closest relative was the elephant. They claimed they had little trunk like things on their faces and their front feet were shaped like an elephant’s. They didn’t look that way to me but they were cute.Once back at the dock we walked into the closest shopping center. I wanted an additional flash memory card for the PC and Bobbi forgot her pocket size calculator. We could find only one store carrying the flash memory but the prices were very high and I
gave it a pass. We did find the calculator though. After waking around a short time we went back to the ship for lunch.Bobbi still could not get her shopping fill so she went back after lunch. I had better things to do. This evening we are supposed to meet ten other couples at an African restaurant for dinner.
At about 7:30 this evening we walked to the back of the ship where the end of the dock was and got a taxi. It took about 15 minutes to get to the restaurant. It was a metered taxi and with Bobbi giving way too much tip, the price came to 50 Rand. That’s about $7.14 US.
We walked into the front door and just inside were heavy iron gates we had to open to get through. The entire place was decorated by real Africans. We were led to the second floor, up a round staircase, of what must have been a large old house. It would not have met code in any place we knew of in the US. It felt as if the railing would go any second. It moved and creaked so much we were afraid to hold on to it. Upstairs there were a few rooms all decorated in different African themes. We were in a large one with Egyptian motif. The furniture was simple and seemed old.
It seems there is a lot of illness going around the ship. Our original ten couples were now seven people. The couple that invited us, a young man that now lived and worked there and who was a friend of that couples daughter, and another couple that had also been on the ship for part of the world cruise last year.
To start things off we were informed their credit card machine was broken and they would only take $ Rand. One couple had none and borrowed from us. Ha, ha. Wait until they find out we are from Chicago. Wait until they find out what the vigorish per minute is. Wait until they find out how we handle late payment.
The menu was a typewritten piece of paper. Everything was served family style. They just brought everything on the menu. If there was something you wanted more of, just ask. They would keep bringing until we said stop. While it was a great experience and fun, I would not trade the food for the ship’s food. Kiddies, you don’t want to trade African food for mama’s or daddy’s cooking. Some of it was pretty good though and nothing terrible except possibly some fish balls wrapped in foil. One lady made an awful face and said don’t eat it. As we could find no reason to doubt her, we didn’t. We will check tomorrow and see if she is well. After dinner, a large group of waitress, all wearing old African dress, came in singing and playing loud drums. That was good.
We love doing different things. Again, this was a great experience and everyone at our table was terrific to talk to and be with. I would do it again in a second.
There are a lot more things to see and do here. We have to come again. All the local people have been very friendly, as they were in Namibia. This is another great town. If I had to live here, I could very easily.
No comments:
Post a Comment