Sunday, November 25, 2007
Cape Town & Robben Island (Nov 2nd)
If you want to visit
Robben Island it is advisable to book your tickets a few days in advance if you can. You can either book by phone or in person at the ticket office on the V&A waterfront. We booked our tickets on Wednesday morning and the first available slot for us was Friday at 5pm. The 5pm tour is the last of the day and will get you back at the V&A Waterfront for around 8.30pm. Given the choice I would recommend taking an earlier tour unless you are there in the hotter months of the summer. November is late spring in South Africa and it gets dark around 7.30pm. It's also very chilly on Robben Island at that time in the evening. Whatever time you go take some warm clothes with you!
This morning we walked down to the V&A Waterfront again, had a wander around, a coffee and took the Cape Town hop on hop off sightseeing bus (R100 for 1 day, R180 for 2 days). The bus tour was very enjoyable and is a good way to get an overall view of the city and its history.
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The bus stops at the V&A Waterfront, Aquarium, various stops downtown including the District Six museum and the Jewish museum, Table Mountain Cable car, Camp's Bay and various other stops. We would have liked to stop at a few places, including the District Six museum, but we were a bit tight for time so just sat on the top deck of the bus for the full journey, listening to the commentary, enjoying the view and taking photos.
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We got off the bus at Sea Point, quite near to our guesthouse, had a late lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant then had an hour of relaxation before going back down to the Waterfront for our Robben Island tour.
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Robben Island was very interesting and is definitely well worth a visit for anyone going to Cape Town. The island is most famous for its maximum security prison which housed prisoners during the apartheid years, including Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned here for 18 of his 27 years in prison. Robben Island was also a leprosy colony between 1846 and 1941 and a milatary training facility during the second world war. It has been a museum since 1997.
The trip over to the Island, which is 12km away, takes around 30 minutes by catamaran. We were originally sitting downstairs and made the mistake of deciding to go on the top deck for some views. The views of Cape town were great, but it was so choppy and rough that we couldn't easily get back down the stairs again and spent most of the rest of the journey holding on to the railings for dear life.
Once on the island the first part of the tour was a bus tour around the island, showing us the different blocks of the prison, the wildlife (lots of penguins) and some views of the city. This part of the tour lasted around half an hour,
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The next part of the tour was the most interesting and was with an ex prisoner. We sat in one of the communal cells, with a few bunk beds at one end and listened to his stories of his time there as a political prisoner. The small cell that we were in originally housed up to 50 prisoners at a time and had only a couple of toilets and showers. After this we moved to a different prisoner block and saw the original prison cell of Nelson Mandela. In his time in prison the leaders were kept in a separate block from everyone else to prevent them influencing everyone else, but they managed to get round this by stuffing tennis balls with messages and "mistakenly" hitting them over to the other section during recreation time. This part of the tour lasted around an hour and we were given lots of opportunity to ask questions before taking the boat back to the mainland.
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In the evening we had dinner at a Belgian restuarant at the waterfront, which we had wisely booked this time, then it was back to the guesthouse to try and get a good night's sleep before getting up at 5,30am for our flight to Port Elizabeth.
Labels: Cape Town, Western Cape
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Cape Town - Table Mountain (Oct 31st)
We got up bright and early today, around 8am, although I could have easily slept until noon! At breakfast we met Antony who is one of the owners of Blackheath Lodge and he was very helpful, giving us loads of suggestions for things to do during our stay. After breakfast we took a walk from the guesthouse to the Victoria & Albert Waterfront, via the coastal path, which took around half an hour. It was lovely to finally be somewhere warm, with blue skies and sunshine after all the rain we had in Edinburgh this summer.
The V&A Waterfront was very pleasant - lots of shops, cafes and restuarants and great views of Table Mountain.
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We had a wander round the shops, a drink in a cafe overlooking the water followed by a seafood lunch in one of the restaurants. Since it was a beautiful clear day we decided to take advantage of the fine weather and took a trip to Table Mountain.
We took a taxi, which was quite amusing as throughout the whole journey the taxi driver spoke only to Stuart, never to me, always calling him "Sir". He asked if we were married and when Stuart told him we were, he told him that Wife was an acronym standing for "Washing", "Ironing", "Feeding" and "Etc". Nice! We decided to take a detour and went for a quick drive up the mountain next to Table Mountain (I forget the name). We had some great views, took a few photos and then headed for the Cable Car at Table Mountain.
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It was around 3pm and there wasn't a big queue for the cable car. We got tickets (R130 return per adult) and were up at the top of Table Mountain within the following 10 minutes. The ride up to the top was very enjoyable (although not for Stuart as he hates Cable Cars!) and the floor rotated round so that everyone had a 360 degree view while going up to the summit of Table Mountain, over 1000 metres high.
Scary view from the Cable Car:
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The views from the top were absolutely amazing. It was a clear day so we could see for miles in all directions, over Cape Town and down towards Cape Point from various view points.
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There were also lots of unusual birds and lizards roaming about at the top of Table Mountain. We spent an hour or so just wandering round, mainly on the wooden walkways, savouring the views from different directions.
Here's a photo of Stuart at the top:
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And a view of Camp's Bay:
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After our walk we enjoyed a cold beer from the self service cafe and then took the Cable Car back down.
Not for those afraid of heights:
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We took a taxi back to Blackheath Lodge and luckily Stuart had a map and knew roughly wheree we were going as the taxi driver got lost - quite a common thing in Cape Town it seems, so it makes sense to be armed with a map and an understanding of where you are staying (if you're not in one of the big central hotels).
In the evening we went back to the V&A Waterfront for dinner. Unfortunately it was really busy (8pm on a Wednesday night) and we didn't have a reservation so we spent quite a while wandering round trying to find a place we liked the look of that wasn't fully booked. We ended up in a Portuguese restuarant, which wouldn't have been my normal choice but it turned out to be lovely. I had some bread and chorizo, followed by a very tasty king prawn Goan curry. Stuart ordered Chorizo in red wine sauce for a starter, which was absolutely massive followed by tuna skewers with enough tuna to feed a family of four!
Labels: Cape Town
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Review of Blackheath Lodge Cape Town
Blackheath Lodge is a lovely guesthouse situated on Cape Town's Atlantic Seaboard, just under Signal Hill. It's a beautiful Victorian house which has been lovingly restored by the owners Antony and John. There are around 10 rooms in the guesthouse, a nice living room area, pretty garden area with a small heated swimming pool and a verandah overlooking the pool for breakfast or drinks.
Our room was in the attic and very spacious with a big king bed, good sized bathroom with a shower, lots of cupboard and drawer space, air conditioning and a reasonably priced mini bar/honesty bar.
Here are a couple of photos of our room:
The view from the shower in the morning:
Blackheath Lodge is in a nice quiet residential area and it is a pleasant 30 minute walk to the V&A Waterfront or around a R25-30 taxi fare.
The owners were extremely friendly, welcoming and helpful and Antony made it his business in the morning to help all the guests plan their day, make bookings for people and suggest itineraries. The other staff were also very good and Jean-Claude the security guy was very pleasant.
Breakfast consisted of fresh fruit, yogurt, cereals, fresh baking (yummy cinnamon croissants), toast, muesli, coffee, tea, juice and smoothies.
Over all we had a fantastic stay here and I highly recommend it for anyone staying in Cape Town.
You can read more
reviews of Blackheath Lodge on TripAdvisor.
Labels: Accommodation Reviews, Cape Town
From Edinburgh to Cape Town (Oct 30th)
Today Stuart and I struggled out of bed at 3.30am for our 5.50am flight to Amsterdam with KLM. We needn't have bothered getting up so early - when we arrived ast Edinburgh airport the place was dead. We were originally planning to try and wangle ourselves an upgrade but the woman at the checkin desk didn't actually work for KLM and she looked a bit on the evil "don't mess with me" side so we didn't bother.
We were over the luggage limite of 22kg by a couple of kilos each, but luckily we weren't charged anything so that was a good start. The time passed pretty slowly at Edinburgh due to the fact that practically nothing was open - not even Costa, so I'll remember that in future if I go for an early flight.
Stuart enquired about an upgrade in Amsterdam (since we were on honeymoon) but we were told that the flight was completely full, so no chance. (Does anyone on honeymoon really get an upgrade).
The flight from Amsterdam to Cape town was 11.5 hours, which was a bit of a disappointment given that I had thought it was 10hrs. I was pretty impressed with the Economy class in KLM though - it was a Boeing 777 and they had video on demand on all the seatbacks, which meant that rather than the usual 8 films all running at the same time, with half the plane visiting the toilet when a film finishes, they had a library over over 50 films, inlcuding some new releases, plus games, tv shows etc, which you could start and pause whenever you liked. They KLM staff were also very generous with drinks, so the combination of a few wines and lots of film watching made a huge difference.
We arrived in Cape Town, which is 2hrs ahead of Edinburgh at around 11pm and were picked up by a friendly driver who took us to Blackheath Lodge, our home for the next four nights.
Labels: Cape Town, Flight
