The City

I'm going to try to go through what we've been doing recently.

On Wednesday we tried to explore the town a bit. We wandered around quite a lot, from our hostel down to Loop St and Long St which are the sort of social centre of town. Off Long Street we found a market selling all kinds of souvenirs, mostly drums and masks etc but quite a lot of qorld cup stuff too, and definitely a few vuvuzelas. I have so far resisted the urge but it won't be long. On that square was an art gallery looking at apartheid, the resistance to it and the art from blacks at that time. Some of it was great, some very dark and naturally some pretty poor (modern art again...) The building was interesting, all ancient furniture, you could imagine when the building was new.

After this we went to find some lunch in "Pick n Pay", South Africa's answer to Tesco's with a typically direct name policy it seems. Good except that it doesn't sell multipacks of chocolate bars so I am breaking my Mars-a-day habit. Eaten in the Company's Garden. When the Dutch started settling Cape Town in the late 1600s they sent a gardener out here to plant a vegetable garden to help fulfil the Cape's purpose of warding off scurvy. Over time this has evolved into a beautiful botanical garden, all wonderful trees and plants from all over (not just SA!) It has also developed rather aggressive wildlife, pigeons and squirrels, one of which hopped up and sat next to me before I leapt out of my seat to defend my Danish. Here is an inquisitive duck lookalike trying his chances, it was a huge thing which initially crept up behind me which was a surprise.

And the tenacious squirrel:

There was a lovely rose garden:

We also found the South African National Gallery which we are reserving for what we Europeans call a rainy day, but here they are more worried about wind as when it comes from the South East it can reach 80 mph apparently, they call it the Cape Doctor.

Then we wandered across to find the South African Parliament. Being boring types we found this very interesting. They have tours which are another rainy day plan. Sandra risked extraordinary rendition by taking a picture of it.

And later discovered what looked like an interesting building so we took a photo of it anyway. Pretty sure it's no longer an insurance company and I've forgotten who the chap in the foregound is.