Cape Town - Sun: Kirstenbosch Gardens

On Sunday morning, we headed to Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden, at the foot of Table Mountain. It was absolutely gorgeous. In the lower right corner of the photo above, you can just barely see one of the large grassy areas. We saw dozens of families enjoying picnics on them that Sunday.

We had a nice breakfast at the restaurant there, where Aviva (no surprise) found some girls (probably ages 7 and 9) to play with. She did rejoin us later.

Throughout the park we saw amazing plants. Many of them looked completely different than plants I'd seen before.

We loved the proteas (South Africa's national flower), especially the "pincushion proteas."
The king protea was also amazing.

Peter, Aviva, and Richard were almost color coordinated.
Aviva got sleepy, so we let her nap in her stroller while we checked out more plants.
There was a Useful Plants Garden that included this excellent sign.
The lane of huge camphor trees was wonderful.
Aviva enjoyed a lot of it from her favorite vantage point: Grandpa Richard's shoulders.

The Garden was a great way to spend our Sunday morning. I can't wait to see it in a different season!

Cape Town - Sat afternoon: Simon's Town and Kalk Bay

After we ate lots of delicious food at the Neighbourgoods Market, we headed to yet another meal: lunch at The Foodbarn, in Noordhoek. The restaurant is part of the Noordhoek Farm Village complex, which includes two restaurants and a little cafe, some shops, an adorable nursery, and a terrific playground.

I got a bit tired of taking food photos, but I will say that my favorite dish there was Peter's starter: prawn fritters with ginger & coriander samoosas, served with harrissa mayo and cinnamon oil. Yum!

The staff at the restaurant were wonderfully accommodating, and graciously helped us change tables after we realized that they had tables outside overlooking the playground area. When Peter put Aviva down to join the other children in the play area, she ran (toddler-style) toward them with her arms up in the air, as if to say, "My people! My people! I'm here! Come play with me!" Unfortunately, since they were all quite a bit older, and busy playing their own games, they ignored her. But she didn't mind at all!

Then we headed to Simon's Town to see the penguin colony.





Aviva chatted with Susan a bit. This is a noisy clip, but if you listen carefully, you can hear Aviva's "words" over the wind.



We then drove to Kalk Bay for coffee at Olympia Cafe, where we would have ordered food, if we hadn't eaten so much already. The mussels looked fabulous and smelled great, too. Then, since we were already there (and we were hoping the now-grumpy Aviva would eat some chips), we stopped by Kalky's, which is sort of an institution in South Africa. Tons of different kinds of fish. The chips were just ok, but the fish was quite good. Grumpy Aviva wanted none of it, and preferred to look at seals outside.

Finally, we drove back to Camps Bay along the western side of the Cape Town peninsula. I don't remember exactly, but I think the below photos were taken around Hout Bay.



Even after a long day of eating and sightseeing, Aviva had lots of energy to play with Grandpa Richard that night.

Cape Town - Sat morning: Neighbourgoods Market

On Saturday we went to the Neighbourgoods Market in Woodstock, a once gritty industrial neighborhood that seems to be gentrifying. The market is full of specialty food and design purveyors, and is in the some complex as The Test Kitchen (where we ate Thanksgiving lunch), the Old Biscuit Mill.

There were tons of different foods for sale: omelets, dumplings, sandwiches, tarts, cakes, and even "New York Bagels." We had some delicious tarts and a great flamm kuchen, sort of an Alsatian thin-crust pizza. I bought some yummy gingered honey, pecorino cheese, and a stuffed owl toy made of vintage fabric.

Aviva enjoyed the pet goods section.


One of the stores in the Old Biscuit Mill complex had these huge beanbags. Aviva really liked them. We might just have to get one. Here's a few short clips of her playing with and on them.



In short, I really enjoyed the market. The food was delicious, and there was tons of beautiful, interesting design and art for sale. I would definitely go back!

Cape Town - Fri: Franschoek wine tour

As I've probably said before, we seem to always be racing the clock in South Africa. By the time we finished lunch and walked the grounds at Bread & Wine, nearly all of the vineyards were closing their wine tasting counters. We rushed to Haute Cabriere and arrived about 10 minutes before 4. Sure enough, they were closing down. These hours are somewhat amazing to me, because there was almost three hours more of sunlight in the day! Don't they want to sell more wine to unsuspecting tourists?

Anyway, the staff apologized and gave us each a free taste of wine of their wines to enjoy while sitting at a table outside. The view was absolutely beautiful. The next video is two short clips. A cute one of Aviva playing with Peter and then a panoramic view from the hillside.



Next time we'll take our helicopter.

After our quick tasting there, we went across the valley to another restaurant, only to realize that because of its location, it was in the shade already! So then we quickly found a vineyard, Dieu Donne, back on the other side of the main road.

Again, we had found a beautiful restaurant with a nice yard and sandbox for kids. Aviva, however, found two playmates, so she was plenty busy.



We had some tapas, pasta, and yes, more wine. My favorites were the marinated anchovies and the warm lentil salad. We couldn't possibly squeeze in any more meals, so we headed back to Camps Bay.

Cape Town - Fri: Robben Island and Bread & Wine

On Friday morning, we set out early for one of Cape Town's most well known sites, Robben Island. During the 45 minute ferry ride to the island, Grandpa Richard entertained Aviva by wearing her sunhat.

We admired the view of Cape Town from the ferry.

We had an excellent tour guide on the bus ride around the island, but the tour of the prison itself wasn't that interesting. Still, I think most people consider it a "must-see" attraction.

Afterwards, we made a quick stop at the showroom of Skinny laMinx, a Cape Town shop that Susan and I (Callista) both have admired from afar. We both love the designs, and even got to meet Heather Moore, the designer.

Then we piled back into our rental car and drove an hour to Franschoek, which means "French corner" in Afrikaans. First stop: Bread & Wine at Moreson vineyards for lunch. We ate lunch in a beautiful tree-lined courtyard.

Before we even sat down, Aviva had found the play area. We were thrilled to find that many very nice restaurants at different vineyards had toys, sand boxes, or other play areas for children. We chose almost all of them for their food, but were pleasantly surprised to find out how kid-friendly they were. Aviva had a grand time with a pitcher of ice.

Here's the wonderful menu.
We shared the antipasto plate, which included all kinds of cured meats, an arugula salad, and delicious olives and mozzarella balls, as well as a small slice of some kind of Scotch egg.

We also had some delicious Namibian oysters, and shared Susan's yummy Green Goddess pizza. My warm veal tongue salad was amazing, and came with a mustard sorbet. Sounds gross, but trust me, it was great.


We also tasted some very nice Moreson wines, including an excellent sauvignon blanc. After lunch, we spent some time on the beautiful and interesting grounds. There is a specialty nursery with tons of orchids, and some cute furniture, like this warthog bench.


These clips aren't that thrilling, but you can see what a beautiful setting it was.


Back in the car to the next glorious spot...

Cape Town - Thu afternoon / evening

We had a truly fantastic meal at The Test Kitchen for Thanksgiving lunch.

Of course Aviva enjoyed it, as she was the center of attention.
I won't get into all of the details, but one of my favorites was this:

Herb-charred tuna, red cabbage, horseradish cream with Japanese apple
dressing.

Everything was fabulous. It was hard to get a reservation, and I can see why. It was fairly small and all of the food and wine was delicious.

That afternoon we went to Table Mountain, but it was so windy that the cable car wasn't running. We drove over to Signal Hill, where there were plenty of beautiful views.

Later that night, we had a few video calls with family. Aviva really enjoyed
her call with Cousin Seamus and Uncle Jeff.




Later that night, Aviva showed off her lion imitating skills. She loves a
series of Taiwanese kids videos, and one of them includes a clip of some
people dressed as lions. In Chinese, the sound of a lion's roar is "Hou"
(pronounced like "hoe"). You can also hear me sort of singing along to the
video - I couldn't help it. The tune is catchy!

Cape Town - Wed and Thu morning

We arrived in Cape Town on Wednesday night. After we checked into our rental place in Camps Bay, we headed down to a restaurant called The Codfather (ha ha) for dinner. We shared a huge plate of seafood - langoustines, calamari, butter fish, and kingklip.On Thursday (Thanksgiving morning), we walked down to the strip in Camps Bay for breakfast. Aviva ate some of her Grandpa Richard's open omelette (but she really just grabbed pieces of arugula off of it.



Richard and Susan enjoyed the sunshine.



The beach at Camps Bay is beautiful, but it was a little too cold for swimming.

Later that day we walked around central Cape Town. Here's the view of Table Mountain from Company Gardens.

Weekend at Phinda - Sunday

On Sunday morning, we went for a final game drive. We saw many baby animals, which were very cute.

Mama and baby zebra


Mama and baby nyala

On our last game drive, we saw signs of a leopard. I think this was the paw print of a female.

Later, a few people glimpsed a male leopard in the trees, but Peter and I did not. Guess we'll have to go back!

Toward the end of the drive, we stopped for some drinks and snacks at a beautiful watering hole. Our guide made us a special amarula-hot chocolate-coffee. Yum!

Here we are with our tracker, Sifiso, and our ranger, JP.Peter's showing off how he would use the knobkerry to protect us.


Afterwards, Aviva had fun with her Grandpa Richard at breakfast.


We took one last look at the beautiful view of the reserve from the lounge.




As soon as we arrived on Friday afternoon, the au pair, Thuba greeted us with a bag of toys. Aviva practically dove into her arms, and then proceeded to spend almost the whole weekend with her.



Although Thuba was Aviva's primary caretaker, throughout the weekend, Aviva apparently got to know the entire staff. Occasionally random staff members would come up to us and compliment us on how cute or friendly Aviva was. We had to shrug our shoulders - this baby used to be very unfriendly! But while we were there, we would see her walking by in the background. Once I saw her walking into the kitchen with someone, probably a cook or waiter. It seemed as though all of the staff knew her, which was wonderful. We felt very welcome.

On the way out, we saw a mama warthog with several piglets.


We had a great time and highly recommend Phinda Mountain Lodge.