Cape Town Finally!! Part 1

 So I have lived in Africa for 2+ years. And I have NEVER been to Cape Town. And everyone nags me about it.... I've meant to go, really it's just that I always thought the kids and I would tag along when Jeff had to go to CT on business when school was out but then we're always traveling when school is out, and our CT trip never materialized. Of course Mom wanted to visit CT also so we decided that enough was enough and we would just DRIVE there. We had one week between the Shipwreck Trail and Christmas and so we headed out on a Monday morning and planned to be back Fri night so we could spend the weekend with Jeff. Those of you who read my last post know that we finished the shipwreck trail on Sun and didn't get home until 5pm Sunday evening so we're talking a QUICK turn-around! Backpacks unpacked and small suitcases out, here we go! We drove 8.5 hours of the 10 hour drive to a small town called Caledon and had chosen a small hotel called the Athenian Villa. It was so cute and we had this super cute room for 4, but then the owner offered Grammy her OWN room so we really got to spread out!

Happy to be done with the drive!

 We headed out to dinner at this rustic local place called "The Barn". Good food and nice people.
Friday would be another long driving day back to PE so we really had 3 full days to take in all we could of the Eastern Cape. We decided to do a Wine Country Day, a City Day, and a Cape of Good Hope Day. Our strategy of only driving to Caledon was perfect as the Wine Country is on the way to Cape Town so we were right there. We got a map  and tried to pick out a vineyard to tour. But there were HUNDREDS of them! Where do you start? My friend Lisa had mentioned in passing that she thought Franschhoek had a wine tram of some sort and we googled it and sure enough, a tram/train tour that would take you to 8 vineyards and you could even pick the blue route or the red route! We were in. We drove to Franschhoek and got some of the last tickets of the day since it was a public holiday.

 Franschhoek is GORGEOUS! A tiny little picturesque town tucked into the mountains with vineyards and lovely Dutch architecture...

 We toured around on the tram and then got to hit the ones accessed by train. What fun!

 On the Wine train.... all aboard!

 Picture-perfect Franschhoek. It makes you want to spin on a mountain like Maria Von Trapp...

 We finished our tour (which would have been a lot more fun if I didn't have to drive to CT afterward...) and then jumped in the car. Capetown was only about 45 minutes down the road. We had rented this little apartment that I found on some crazy website and it was awesome. 2 bedroom, 2 bath, lovely kitchen, and it was on this cute canal... we even had our own little dock!

We were right in this new, modern section of the city called Century City and there was this HUGE (Texas-sized) mall that was adjacent to our apartment. Adjacent like a 3 minute walk through a secret door that we had a key card to. Teddy was feeling sick so he jumped in a bath and Sasha and I walked to the mall and brought home some grub. We ate in our little apartment and hit the sack. It had been a fun but long day in the sun.
The next day was our city day. We headed straight to Table Mountain to ride the cable car to the top:

 There was a massive line for tickets but someone had tipped me off and we had already bought our tickets online (why everyone doesn't do this is beyond me... you'd think the word would be out by now...) So we skipped the entire line, and were ushered straight to the cable car and right on. Woohoo! It was like having a FastPass.... Almost to the top, what a view!

 We had another SPECTACULAR day. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and you could see for miles. We looked all around:

 You could see all the way to the tip of Africa!

 We explored the top and hiked a bit and then took another car down as we had more of the city to see. The floor of the car spins as you go up and down so you get a 360° view as you ride.

 Next we headed to the Victoria and Albert Waterfront. We had 3 goals: 1.) The Scratch Patch at Mineral World, 2.) A cool food Market 3.) A Lego exhibit. First the Scratch Patch. There's this place that has about 1,000,000,000,000,000 polished gemstones and they just have them like half a foot deep in this one area. You can buy a bag of whatever size you want and then in you go and put whatever you want to in your bag. BEST. THING. EVER. First of all it's like ice-skating, trying to walk around on all these polished rocks but it feels really cool. Second getting down IN the rocks and just touching all of them and running them through your hands or making rock angels or whatever is fabulous. And then you get to look at them all and pick the ones you want to take home! We were in heaven.

Looking in every area:

 South African Ball-Pit:

 I asked Grammy if she wanted a bag and she said "No" and I was like "Have you LOST your MIND?" Then she got in there and was like "Yes! Of course I want a bag!!" These 2 were in heaven. The rocks were all warm and toasty from the sun too... luscious. We had so much fun the rest of the trip taking out our rocks, saying why each one was special and why we had picked it, and why our collection was the best. (Mine)

 Then we went to this AMAZING food market where a million incredible vendors sell everything from wild game to coffee to desserts. Foodie PARADISE! I gave the kids their own money and sent them off to scrounge up whatever looked good and they came back with some kind of gorgeous yogurt parfait and a few different meat pies. Mom and I got some specialty samosas, jambalaya and a beautiful piece of Springbok with mash. It was all sensational. I forgot to take pics.... but afterward I had remorse so I took this pic for you of the view of Table Mountain from our outside table:

With our hunger abated we set off to check out the Lego exhibition: "The Art of the Brick." It was pretty cool...

 Our fav! Is this one for sale?!?

 So neat!

 After that we headed back to the food market for the dessert round and got some really yummy ice cream. Headed back to the apartment, had a swim and then headed out to what we had heard was a cool "local" seafood place. It was actually kind of lame and waaaay overpriced but getting hosed as a tourist is part of the deal sometimes. Can't complain about a seafood meal after a great day in CT right?