Hop on - Hop off
It was our very first weekend in Cape Town and in order to orient ourselves better to the Cape Peninsula, we took the double decker hop on - hop off peninsula bus tour. The ride took us around Table Mountain, beginning from the city centre and circling past the Constantia Winelands, Hout Bay, and Camps Bay before heading back into the city. We only hopped off the bus for lunch near the gorgeous turquoise waters of Hout Bay and for a short walk along the beach at Camps Bay, but the tour gave us a great idea of where in the city we would like to visit during our remaining time in Cape Town.
Beaches
A visit to Cape Town would not be complete without exploring the beautiful beaches and bays along the Atlantic Coast and False Bay. We found ourselves spending the majority of our time split between two beaches: Camps Bay (Atlantic Coast) and Muizenberg Beach (False Bay). In addition to our first walk along Camps Bay, we returned for a few fun beach days, a beautiful sunset, and we enjoyed dinner and drinks along the long strip of restaurants and shops that ran parallel to the beach. The water at Camps Bay is known for being especially cold during the summer months (November - February), as it directly influenced by the cold melting ice in the Antarctic. Despite this, we decided to take a swim and attempted to learn how to throw a rugby ball while in the water. Our other favorite beach spot is Muizenberg Beach’s Surfer’s Corner. It was an easy train ride to get to and had gorgeous views of False Bay. Besides being a great surfers beach, it is also known (or is most photographed) for its brightly colored beach huts and the walk along the coast to St. James Beach and onto Hout Bay. We never surfed in Muizenberg, but almost every Friday afternoon we went to the beach to watch our other volunteer friends surf and have dinner at one of our local favorite hang out locations, the Blue Bird Garage Food Market. The Blue Bird easily became our Friday night hang out with it’s 16 food vendors selling everything from Vegan Sushi to Burgers to our favorite Falafel to Portuguese cuisine and yummy Chinese dumplings. And that doesn’t even count the dessert and the handmade goods for sale. It turned out to also be one of our favorite shopping locations and one of the best places for us to have great conversations with the local residents.
The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront
Even though it’s one of Cape Town’s biggest tourist attractions, we enjoyed spending time at the V&A Waterfront eating, drinking, shopping, visiting museums, the Volvo Ocean Race sailing boats, and even for watching an outdoor film. While the only locals you meet there are the employees of the many shops and restaurants, it was easy to wander around and enjoy the atmosphere. In addition to the variety of restaurants and mall shopping, there was a large warehouse filled with artistry and handmade curios, an aquarium, a food market, the Nelson Mandela gateway (where boats leave for Robben Island) and museum, and plenty of “people watching” to be done. One evening we also enjoyed “Love Actually” on the lawn of the Springbok Museum. It was great to pack a picnic, grab your blankets and lawn chairs to enjoy a movie on a chilly but nice spring evening. We enjoyed it so much we attended a second outdoor movie but in a different location.
Kirstenbosch
The beautiful botanical gardens of the Cape sit at the base of Table Mountain and this was the location of our second movie watching experience, as we enjoyed watching “The Breakfast Club”. Although the atmosphere at the Springbok Museum was nice, this atmosphere, sitting in the lush gardens nestled up against Table Mountain with a beautiful star lit night was more than enough incentive for us to enjoy another movie with our blankets, lawn chairs and wonderful picnic and snack foods. If you are ever visiting Cape Town in November through April, we would highly recommend finding a Galileo movie site and enjoying a great evening relaxing under the stars with friends, a glass of your favorite drink, and a nice picnic.
The Old Biscuit Mill, Neighbor Goods Market, and Hint Hunt
The Old Biscuit Mill is a set of refurbished buildings just outside of Cape Town located in Woodstock. The buildings are filled with shops and restaurants, and on the weekends the Neighbor Goods Markets opens with many wonderful food vendors for brunch, lunch and drinks. It is such a popular place, it seems that most of Cape Town turns out for the yummy food, drink and great open camaraderie. It was fun to enjoy the food while sitting at large picnic tables casually conversing. One of the businesses occupying the top floor of the mill is Hint Hunt. If you have never heard an escape game, the rules are fairly simple – you enter a room with your friends or team, are locked in, and have one hour to find your way out using the clues hidden inside. We attempted the escape with 3 people and didn’t quite make it out, but it was a great way to challenge ourselves and spend an evening working together. This is something we will certainly do again. As we have now learned these types of escape games are popping up in many cities, so keep on the look out – it was good fun!
Long Street
The Bourbon Street of Cape Town, Long Street is filled with two story bars and restaurants with traditional Dutch Captonian architecture including balconies and many inebriated people, some locals but mostly tourists. Wednesdays seemed to be the nights we would go there with many of the Projects Abroad volunteers for a beer and playing billiards. This was also the area of town where we had to be most alert to the pick pocketing. Thank goodness, we never experienced this directly, but had known several volunteers who had their iPhones and jewelry taken.
ABSA Currie Cup Rugby Finals
Our second weekend in Cape Town we managed to secure tickets to South Africa’s premier domestic rugby competition. While we can’t claim to have known much about rugby beforehand (and still can’t really make that claim) it was so easy to get caught up in the spirit of Newlands Stadium and the energy of the Western Province fans. The last 7 minutes of the game may have been the most exciting (and it was the one time where we actually felt like we knew what was happening) and when Western Province won in the last second of the game, we were exhilarated and thrilled to have been able to be present at such an exciting event, and at that particular moment, be loud cheering WP fans.