Cape Town 2009

I needed a short vacation so I decided to book a group tour through Morocco. But….I ended up in Cape Town Why? Well, I believe someone/something did not want me in Morocco, as my trip got canceled (no available flights) 3 days before leaving. I postponed my vacation for 1 week and booked (almost) the same vacation via another agency…..but…..also got canceled because there where no available flights! Imagine how disappointed I was

Someone great – Greg – (who was in NL last September for a Distributed Domain Driven Design presentation I attended and I had some beers with) said to me: “hey, come to Cape Town, I gonna be there for a couple of months”. After asking him if he was sure about having me over, I just booked a flight to Cape Town!

So this girl was excited about her trip to Cape Town, but got spooked after some people telling her how dangerous it is over there……glad I did not listen to all these people. I just made sure that Greg would pick me up at the airport and I reset my brains and put myself into a “no worries” mode.

The flight was long, very very long, about 11,5 hrs long!!!! Nice was the part above the “Sahara”, really, like 5hrs only sand out there! I watched 2 movies: Star Trek (great movie) and My Sisters Keeper (bad choice, crying in a plane, but good movie). And finally around midnight I arrived at CPT international where Greg was waiting for me as promised We took a taxi back to the apartment. What a great place to stay for the week, the view was wonderful!

View from apartment

And there was a big surprise waiting for me, I was amazed (still are) as he cooked dinner for me!!!!!!!!!! And it was delicious!

The next day Ernst, a friend of Greg, took us to the beach.

beach

SA has some amazing beaches. After the beach he dropped us at the waterfront and from up there we walked to the apartment. Oh: we also bought us some bottles (5) of great SA wine, as we didn’t want to drink rooibos tea the whole evening (as we did the first night, but we bug-fixed ourselves pretty good after that).

We started our days drinking coffee and having breakfast at a local coffee shop near the apartment.  Then downtown to the market for more coffee (d*mn hangovers) at Vida e Caffe near st Georges mall. At night, we hanged out a lot at the pubs in Long Street. Sun-downers at “Cape to Cuba” and then party at Zula and Fiction.

Vida e Caffe

I recommend the places mentioned above. At Cape to Cuba, ask Guidian (the bartender) for some “suitcases”, great stuff And drink local beer, like Castle.

Zula

My vacation was very laid-back (as I am) and I had a great time. But with great company, like Greg, I could even have a great time trapped into a cave. We had like 2 hangover days, those days we did not go out but stayed at the apartment. And lucky me, he cooked dinner those days

Other highlights:

• Goldfish
• 5fingersshoes
• meta book
• the undutchables
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• Give away your book
• flight of the conchords
• friendship
• happy hour
• angel
• tattoo
• backpacking
• taxi
• platinum blond + beard
• tapas at wine bar
• white belt
• record purse
• french
• uncharged iphones
• change of life
• stickers
• owning several shirts

Last day was weird, I felt sad that I had to go back to reality.  :(    All my favorite places where closed (Sunday) and we ended up at a pub called  The Dubliner where we had our Castles and Greg wrote a dozen of postcards.

writing postcards

After that we went across the street to eat Mexican. Greg escorted me to the airport where we said goodbye.

One short fantastic week I had, and SA is pretty big and so many beautiful places to see there. One thing for sure: I’ll be Back!