The Company's Garden, with the iconic Table Mountain in the background
After 2½ months adjusting to life in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa አዲሱ አበባ (and some of our things, such as our car, have still not arrived!), we decided to take a break, in conjunction with our daughter's first break from her school. Our destination was that most scenically-located of cities on the southern tip of Africa, Cape Town, where we spent seven days and six nights reacquainting ourselves with some of the conveniences of modern life. Our Ethiopian Airways flight departed from Bole International Airport shortly before 0900 local time Sunday morning...:
...and arrived at Cape Town International Airport six hours later. We picked up a rental car at the airport (a Toyota Yaris), and drove to the Bo-Kaap part of the city, where we checked into accommodations. As it was late on a Sunday afternoon and the three of us were hungry, we decided to find a place for dinner. It wasn't a very difficult choice - since arriving in Addis Ababa in late July, my wife has been suffering from the lack of fresh seafood in the capital city of a landlocked country. Cape Town, on the other hand, being a port city has an abundance of establishments serving up bounties from the sea. We soon found ourselves at Sea Breeze, enjoying fresh oysters as an appetizer:
I had the...well, I don't remember what I ordered as it was a fish I'd never heard of. I do recall that it was tasty:
Dessert was an apple crumble cheesecake. Dining-wise, our trip was off to a fine start:
After dinner it was back to our home-away-from-home in Cape Town, the Dutch Manor Antique Hotel, an atmospheric inn housed in an 1812 building:
The highlight of any visit to Cape Town is to ride the cableway to the top of Table Mountain and look down upon the city, but on Monday morning the rock was shrouded in mist. So instead we drove to Signal Hill for views of the mountain and out over the waterfront:
Lion's Head is a popular hiking spot, though it's best to go with a group due to the security situation (crime is a serious concern in Cape Town as it is in other South African cities):
From Signal Hill we drove down to the Company's Garden, a park and heritage site in the central part of the city. What began in 1652 as the vegetable patch for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) is now a series of gardens free of charge for the public to enjoy:
Not only have we been yearning for seafood while in Addis, we also realized how much we miss the ocean. After the gardens we drove to Sea Point, one of Cape Town's most affluent suburbs, situated between Signal Hill and the Atlantic Ocean. Being early spring in the Southern Hemisphere, it was too chilly to go for a swim, but perfectly fine for admiring a seaside view:
No surprises as to what kind of cuisine we had for lunch. On Monday afternoon, we ate at the Sea Point branch of Ocean Basket, "South Africa's favourite seafood restaurant":
This trip to Cape Town was more than just a sightseeing excursion. For example, after lunch, Shu-E bought herself and Amber some pants, while I had my reading glasses repaired (apparently something as simple as replacing a missing screw is beyond the abilities of Addis Ababa's finest opticians) and perused what was on offer in Wordsworth Books, settling on a copy of Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa by Paul Kenyon. My wife also picked up a sunhat at the local Woolworths, which in South Africa appear to be much classier shopping establishments than the gritty K-Mart/Sears-like shops I remember from my youth.
Shopping completed (for now), we continued driving northeast in our rented Yaris, admiring the ocean scenery:
Eventually we turned inland and returned to Dutch Manor for a short rest, before going out again to meet with some friends from the Foreign Service for dinner. We joined Obio, Yvette and their young son Harrison (along with a couple of Yvette's friends visiting from Taiwan) at Jonkershuis, a casual brasserie-style restaurant on the grounds of the historic Groot Constantia winery (which we would visit later in the week). I had a tasting plate of Cape Malay dishes (Cape Malays are an ethnic group whose ancestors originated from the then-Dutch East Indies, though nowadays the term denotes more of a Muslim identity). It was only R198, around $13.40 - it turned out we had arrived in South Africa at a time when the exchange vis-a-vis the South African rand was clearly in our favor:
After dinner, we drove over to our friends' residence to catch up on things that had been going on since we last got together. Below, Shu-E, Yvette and Amber pose with the bag of Ethiopian coffee we brought with us as a gift, while those with sharp eyes will note your humble scribe in the background (Obio had the good sense to hide himself around a corner):
Our first full day in Cape Town wasn't as busy as the ones that would follow, but we enjoyed coming to the realization that we, too, could get used to this kind of lifestyle. More to come...
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