Beautiful Capetown, the cleaner San Francisco
Trip Start
Feb 10, 2008
1
21
35
Trip End
May 17, 2008
Capetown,
South Africa
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Well, we arrived safe and sound in Capetown, and were able to spend 2.5 days in and around the city. After only a few short hours we quickly realized that this place is a "new and improved" version of San Francisco. Situated between two ocean's, the Atlantic and the Indian, Capetown has incredible shopping, beaches, and mountain ranges. We went up the famous Table Mountain on our second day, after we picked up a replacement camera (the exact same version we had before!). It was a really clear and HOT day, at around 35C. We opted to take the cable car up, instead of the 3 hour hike, simply because of our time limits (not because it was hot and a difficult climb).
Here is a picture of Stephy on top of Table Mountain, and you can see all across the North side of Cape Town.
Derek after a hearty meal at Rick's cafe
Capetown has all the restaurants and bars of San Francisco, or New York for that matter, but is impecibly clean. They have an awesome waterfront with lots of seafood dining, and no tacky Fisherman's wharf!!
They even have their own prision island turned museum! Robbin Island housed Nelson Mandela and many others throughout Apartheid. Unfortunately, like Alcatraz, you need to book over 1 week in advance to get tickets, and we didn't catch it in time. We drove around the city and beautiful mountains and saw all the amazingly clean beaches. We were planning on spending 5 days on the Garden Route (a regularly frequented beach/forest roadway through the Eastern Cape), but decided that we had to come back early to this city. So we planned to leave ourselves atleast one more day in Cape Town.
After a day of tourism, I finally broke down and let Stephy go wild with what we called a "cosmopolitian day", shopping and walking the city. Here is a picture of Steph sitting at a Cafe in the market. She was blistfully happy after a long morning of shopping!!!
After more than my fair share of African jewelery, bags, hats, T-shirts and music shopping (all those things were for me!), we settled in for a great dinner at Rick's Cafe American..........taken from the movie Casablanca
Steph chillin in the market cafe
. A picture of me sporting my beard at Rick's Cafe American. Also, I'm wearing my 3rd watch of the vacation, this one will hopefully last!!!We loved spending time in the city, and know that we could easily spend another 10 days in this place easily. We barely touched any of the museums, having only visited the Castle.
We will definitely be back!! I already emailed my parents and told them this has to be the place for their next vacation. There is absolutely something for everyone. Plus, it is about half the price of anything in San Fran!
