Miscellaneous Cape Town

2Summers | 1 February 2011
birds architecture food hiking gardens animals mountains trees nature reserves sight-seeing Cape Town

First, a few words of thanks:

Thanks to Wordpress for “Freshly Pressing” me for the second time in three months. Wow. It was great to get a second chance because this time I actually understood and appreciated what was happening when my inbox started to overflow.

Thanks to everyone who read, commented on, liked, and subscribed to my blog. I’ve tried to respond to as many of you as possible but if I haven’t, rest assured that I’ve read and appreciated every comment.

Thanks to my mom for coming to visit and giving me an excuse to do fun things that create fantastic blog material.

Thanks to Joe, the man behind the blog, for improving my photography, making my photos look amazing, and teaching me so many interesting things about South Africa.

Now, back to Cape Town. Mom and I did several fun things during our trip that I wasn’t able to cover in the first two posts, so I’ve compiled a few of my favorite photos to illustrate them:

Riding the Hop On Hop Off Cape Town Sightseeing Bus. For someone who thought she disliked group tours, I certainly did a lot of them last weekend. We wanted to visit Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden and the bus was the easiest way to get there. Tickets cost R120 per person and we had the option of stopping at several other locations around town. We also learned many interesting things about Cape Town by listening to those nifty red earphones.
Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, the largest botanical garden in the country with the biggest collection of indigenous flora. It’s a beautiful place for hiking (you can actually walk up Table Mountain from there), picnicking, or just sitting and gazing at the view. You can also have a delicious lunch at the Tea Garden.
Looking through the branches of a gigantic fig tree in the garden’s arboretum. It reminded me of [Wonderboom](/2010/09/18/wonderboom/ "Wonderboom!").
A family of Egyptian geese closes in on a human family picnicking at Kirstenbosch. The guinea fowl in the foreground, who walked with a limp but still got around quite well, seemed to have adopted the goose family.
The city tour bus stopped at Camp’s Bay, a super-trendy Cape Town suburb. Mom and I spontaneously decided to hop off and have a drink. We sat at a seafood restaurant called Ocean Blue, watched the world go by, walked up and down the street, and then took the next bus back to town.
A typical Victorian house in Tamboerskloof, which is a great place to stay on a short visit to Cape Town. You go straight down the hill to get to the Waterfront and straight up the hill to get to Table Mountain. Walking around Tamboerskloof is tiring though – there are no flats.
Shrimp curry (foreground) and peri peri shrimp (background) at Beleza, a Portuguese/Italian restaurant on Kloof Nek Road in Tamboerskloof. We had one dinner and one breakfast there – both were excellent and the restaurant had an interesting alternative vibe.
Mounted police ride past Miller’s Thumb, where we had our best dinner in Cape Town (see [previous post](/2011/01/30/daytripping-around-the-cape/ "Daytripping Around the Cape")). Also in Tamboerskloof.

I’ve reached the end of my Cape Town series, as well as my mother/daughter visit series. Mom is now safely back in South Carolina (sniff) and I’m back to business as usual (or perhaps business UNusual) in Joburg.

Thanks for following along! And don’t go away because I have good stuff planned for the next few days.

One last shot from Cape Town – morning sun on a hiking path between Lion’s Head and Signal Hill. The mountain on the right is Devil’s Peak.