Rolling in Cape Town

This is our third day here.

We arrived on the purple train Friday and checked into our guest house. After our two weeks in S. Africa it feels like we have moved back to California. Don has been in the small pool daily. Surprised?

Saturday we took the hop on-hop off bus blue route. We went to Kirstenbosch Gardens first, then toured the Constantia wine area. Both experiences were wonderful. We had lunch at the second place and bought some local wine. Then we rode the whole rest of the route by the western coastal suburbs back to city center. There we took the canal tour before completing the loop back to our stop. We had dinner at Cafe Paradiso where our server was from California.

On Sunday we had day two of the tour bus so we opted for the red tour. Our goal was Table Mointain. We purchased tickets for the cable car online and we were ready to go. There are layers of clouds that come and go over the mountain called the tablecloth. How cute. So there were clouds. We occasionally got a glimpse of blue sky, but after hot chocolate and strolling on top, we came back down. There were some lovely vistas from the cable car--it rotated as it traversed the hill.

We hopped back on and toured those beaches again, this time getting off and walking for awhile. We took a break for a couple of hours then assembled a picnic to take on the night tour to watch the sunset from Signal Hill. The marine layer kept the sunset from being spectacular, but we had the experience none the less. The bus driver was kind enough to let us off at our guest house--it is right on the route back.
To day we spent some time In the city park, called the Company Gardens and we went to the South African Museum of Art. The museum had a new exhibition featuring the works of Peter Clarke of Simon Town, SA. He is 82 years old and he explored almost every medium. I add that info b/c this is my blog and I want to remember that detail. I enjoyed both places that we visited.We continued our walk to the city center where we had lunch, went to a jewelry store, and found the Hertz car rental. After 42 (almost) years of marriage Don is still my hero as we rented a stick shift little Citroen car and headed off into the sunset on the left side of the roads. Now I served as the navigator--actually we paid extra to have an electronic Garmin to do my job. I had to tell her our destination. We headed out of town on the east side of Cape Town. We saw the penguins at Boulder Beach and went to the Cape Point. There we hiked and climbed up to the old lighthouse and again saw amazing views. We took a different route back. We drove west to be on the Atlantic side again. This included a toll road that goes by Chapman's pass. This was incredible. It is curvy, narrow, and high on the cliffs. There have been many car commercials filmed here. My hero drove it flawlessly!
Don drove up Signal Hill tonight again to watch the sunset into the clouds. That road is almost as bad as Chapman Road.
We love Cape Town and we love meeting other tourists, taking pictures, etc.