Friday 12 February 2016

Down by the V&A Waterfront

The last place that we stopped in South Africa was the harbour. I guess I hadn't thought about it too much, but South Africa is really into all sorts of art. Modern art, traditional art, all sorts. And the harbour had this giant warehouse full of different artists selling stuff
at stalls. It was such a cool place. And the harbour itself is full of awesome little shops and restaurants. We did a little bit of shopping, and then wandered to a cafe overlooking the harbor. It was nice to watch the boats come in and out, although it is quite an industrial place.
After, we walked through the big mall they have there. Its full of a really random assortment of shops, some really low end, and then some really fancy stores. After we went through the mall, we walked around and looked at some of the statues they had of South Africans who have won Nobel Prizes, and all the pretty buildings. They have some really old fashioned classic buildings which are really....at odds with the rest of the harbour!
We sadly did have to leave eventually, so we went back to Cape Town airport, and then took a domestic flight to Johannesburg. It was super weird when we were in Johannesburg airport - we arrives and it was super, super quiet, and a lot and lot of the lights were off. It turns out they had a power outage, and so o bags could come out. It was a bit chaotic, and we got to check in for our next flight in pitch darkness. We couldn't even get into the lounge for a bit because the power was out. It was such a crazy experience, but eventually we did get home in one piece!





Faith Juice in Jars

We had tried to stop at this little farm village shopping area the day before....it's hard to explain but it obviously is a bunch of old farm houses turned into shops, and resturants, and it is super popular. So popular that we couldn't find a place to park the day before. And so after visiting the Botanical Gardens, we drove back out there to try this cafe, that every
South African raved about. And, to my joy, the cutest little juice place was open. This place was seriously the cutest little shack selling juices in jars. It was seriously a hispters dream. And each jar was a little different. Daddy, Josh and I all tried different juices - it was so much fun getting there to find out that it was open today!

A walkway above the Canopy

I had seen the coolest Instagram post about this walkway which is like a path in the canopy of the trees - with a great view of Table Mountain. So, after a little bit of research, I discovered it was at the National Botanical Gardens. We didn't really go there to see anything else, but holy moley, it had such great views of Table Mountain. Everywhere we looked there were such great views. We looked at the nice flowers, and the different type of cactuses and bonsai trees, but we mainly headed towards the walkway.
We climbed a little hill, and then we found the walkway, which had only been built recently. It went over the canopy of the trees, and snaked around the area. I couldn't believe how big the mountain was. In actuality, there is an entire
National Park called Table mountain, so there are all sorts of big mountains all around the gardens. The botanical gardens are really, really big, and it was really quite nice to be under the canopy, rather than on top of it. We had a nice walk around, and watched them actually move some statues for a while. It was gettig to be lunchtime, and we actually couldn't find a shortcut to get out.
In the end, we found our way to the gift shop, where I was able to pick up some cute traditional dolls. Like I said before, it's really not like me to want art from different places, but I really like the stuff that we did pick up on our trip to Africa.

Visiting Table Mountain

We didn't go to Table Mountain the first day because it was covered in clouds, so after coffee at Truth, we headed over to the cable car to the top of Table Mountain. It turned out to be closed due to high winds (or maybe everyone works on their cable cars in the month of February),
so we weren't able to go up it. I was quite sad, so I made Josh take my photo with the signs to prove I at least had been there. Because we weren't able to go up to the top, it was a great chance to visit the Botantical gardens instead.

A Truthful Coffee Shop

As far as I know, Josh only has one South African Student, and the kid really reccomended this place called Truth. It wasn't in the nicest part of town, so in the morning, we got up and drove there. It was such a cool place - a steampunk themed, coffee bar. It was easily the busiest place in town - and definitely a place where hipsters would hang out. I felt obliged to try their coffee, even though I really don't like unflavoured cofee - but I really did enjoy it in the end. All of the people who worked there had the coolest outfits, with corsets and goggles and all sorts. I ordered the french toast crossaint, and it was incredible! In the end, we went another place the next day for lunch, and we totally should have gone back to Truth. It was just such a cool and interesting place.

Thursday 11 February 2016

A Beach called Scarborough

There are actually quite a lot of towns with British names in South Africa - everything seems to have either a British name or a Dutch name which was difficult for me to know how to pronounce! Either way, we wanted to end up somewhere
really nice to watch the sunset, although we were a bit early, and we really wanted another beach. We were killing time until we got to go back into the city. So we stopped at a little town called Scarborough - it didn't look like too much, but it did have a beach. And it seems that in February, almost all the beaches we visited were deserted...only a few people on them. I wasn't going to get out of the car origionally,
but we did end up getting out and going for a little walk along the beach. I was really interested in these lovely rocks which the water smashed up against. The sun wasn't going down as quickly as we thought, so we took our walk along the beach, and then headed back towards the car.
and head over to another town and see what we might find for dinner. We ended up stopping along a couple places until we came to a place in our guide book which had Portugese steak and chips - aparently Portugese food still has a big following in South Africa.
It was super yummy, but I think we were all pretty tired from the day, and I fell asleep before we even left the restaurant car park!

A stop at Chapman's Peak

After my quick stop at the Ostrich farm, we drove around the peninsula, and back towards the other side. There wasn't really much to see, but we did go around a lot of thin, windy roads, roads that were kind of built into the rock.
We stopped at Champan's Peak, which is a lookout place. There were quite a few people there, with picnics and drinks - but we did stop and hope the sun was going to set there. We were a little too early, and it was quite windy, so we headed on to another place to see the sunset.