Author: Rudy

We went for a long walk on the promenade again this morning. We had gone a few kilometres when I started feeling a bit weak. A little shaky. Was it because I stayed up too late last night? Or maybe I just need a bit of energy. We were near the the big public swimming pool where there are quite a few small food booths, so I sat down at one of the picnic tables there and ate a delicious crepe with nutella and bananas. That cured whatever it was that ailed me!

When we got back we went grocery shopping. After lunch I worked on a website while Sue finished reading her bookclub book, “The Woman Upstairs” (4 stars from Sue). The kids Facetimed a bit.

I went to pick up sushi for supper. It was starting to get windy — the forecast is for LOTS of wind tonight. On the way to the restaurant I met my new friend Mike, the ‘parking guy’ from down on our street. He’d been ordered off our street by one of the security guards from the apartment across from us who was going to call the cops if Mike didn’t leave. Mike saw me, called hello to me, asked my how I was doing. He was on his way to the beach — he’ll sleep there tonight. Maybe he’ll try coming back to our street again tomorrow night. He was all matter-of-fact about it!

Sue and I ate our supper and then doddled around some more until around 9pm. I Skyped with my parents. Then I queued up another Netflix documentary, “The Hunting Ground”, and we watched that. Had another Skype with Ed and Val in Gold Canyon. It was midnight when we went to bed.

When Sue woke up this morning at 6 she was expecting to hear the pitter patter of raindrops on our window. That’s what the weather forecast was. That would mean we would likely cancel our morning golf game at the Metropolitan.

That would be wrong. As the morning sky began to brighten it was clear there would be no rain today. Just another perfect day in paradise. Rudy, get up. We’ve got a 7:30 tee time.

After coffee and fruit we walked across the road to the golf course. Other than a few rows of porta-potties, there was little evidence of yesterday’s massive cycling event. This may be Africa, but the cleanliness and efficiency of city workers put OUR big cities to shame. Roads and sidewalks are clean and in great shape. The parks are green, clean, maintained.

We were a bit early for our golf game, but the starter told us to just go — so we golfed, just the two of us, for the first nine holes. That’s not happened for us at this course before. By the time we got to the 10th tee there were some groups ahead, so we had to wait. We decided to pair up with another couple once it was our turn. Marty is a South African who’d lived in Vegas for 25 years before moving back her in 2001. Mara was his ‘office wife’, an Italian woman who was in Cape Town to study and improve her English. And to golf. Kabaam! That woman could drive the ball off the tee! Out-drove the guys every time. Anyway, we had a good time golfing today. Sue played one of her better games, while my game was not-so-good. But, as I say when the game’s not so good, “I had fun.”

We walked back to our apartment and had lunch. Then we sat around for a bit. Sue tried (and failed) to have a nap. Alex and Max skyped. At around 6 we left for a long walk to the Ocean Basket restaurant down in Sea Point. By the time we got there we were hungry. Fish and chips and prawns and sushi. All good.

We took the MyCiti bus back to our place at around 8:30. Back in our room, we watched a bit of TV. I was tired (all that walking out in the sunshine! how can the weather-man get it so wrong?) and couldn’t keep my eyes open. At 10:30 we went to bed.

When we got up this morning the first of about 35,000 cyclists were at the start line in downtown Cape Town. It was a perfect morning — sunny, little wind, not too hot, not too cold. With that number of cyclists, it would take until just before noon when the FINAL group would be setting off for this 109km race around the cape. All morning, from just after dawn until after we’d had our bacon and eggs and headed out to the stadium, we saw thousands of cyclists, all dressed in cycling gear riding towards the city centre (start line).

We went across the road at around 9:30 and the area around the finish line, near the stadium, was already packed with cyclists who had completed the race. These were the ‘fast’ riders — who rode the loop in just over 2-and-a-half hours! The fastest woman in the race finished in 2:51. Many racers were part of a team, and those teams were now enjoying refreshments at their sponsor’s tents which were set up along the route in Green Point Park and along the road in Sea Point. And fans stood on either side of the road and cheered as the cyclists were finishing their last kilometre.

While it is the largest timed race in the world, not all 35,000 participants were ‘racers’. No, we saw lots of mountain bikes, even some fat-tire bikes, and quite a few tandems. It was a great day for a race. There were lots of friends and families and fans supporting the cyclists. It was a remarkable undertaking, well organized and well run. It’s incredible that a city like Cape Town will shut down major routes leading into and through the city for the better part of a weekend in order to make an event like this possible.

We had lunch at home, spent the afternoon reading and computing. We went to Hudson’s and had hamburgers for supper. We FaceTimed with the kids when we got home. Then we watched a bit of Netflix and went to bed at just before 1:00am. We have an early tee time tomorrow morning, but right now the wind is blowing pretty good and Sue says the forecast is for rain tomorrow; but we’ll see about that in the morning.

We got up early and had coffee. It was foggy outside but I could see hundreds of cyclists riding along Main Road just outside our balcony. They’re getting ready for the big Cape Town Bike Race tomorrow.

We ‘made a plan’ to be in Woodstock, an area on the east side of Cape Town, in time for a nine o’clock breakfast. Sue had read about a great breakfast dish served on Saturdays near the Old Biscuit Mill. According to their website, the Old Biscuit Mill is now “a vibrant, warm-hearted little village in the heart of Woodstock where talented people come together to share, collaborate and … show off the heart-felt passion.”

We checked Google maps to estimate what time we’d need to leave from our house in order to get to the mill by 9 — and were on the first bus by 8 o’clock. We ended up waiting for quite a long time before finally getting on the second bus. That bus took us for quite a long ride before we got off just a block away from the mill. It was nine o’clock when we walked through the gates into the shopping arcade.

A woman offered to take a photo of the two of us in front of the Old Biscuit Mill which is at the heart of the shopping area. When Sue asked her where we might find breakfast she immediately directed us to a small booth where a team of cooks were whipping up ‘Rostis’. Well if it isn’t exactly what Sue had read about! So I got some coffees while Sue stood in line waiting to get 2 ‘rostis’.

According to the Old Mill site, “a Rosti is a dose of heaven served on a paper plate, complete with a potato and coriander base, tender bacon, freshly grated Parmesan cheese, a poached egg and the best hollandaise sauce you will ever taste. Throw some chives, salt and pepper on top, and you have yourself the best breakfast of your life.”

After breakfast we wandered around the “Neighbourgoods Market”, enjoying samples at many of the food stalls. I went to look for the ‘Woo Themes’ shop, a company that makes themes and plugins for WordPress, some of which I’ve used — but the shop was closed on Saturday. We also looked in on the famous restaurant, The Test Kitchen.

It was starting to drizzle a bit so we headed back to the bus stop and took the bus back to town. We decided NOT to take the second leg of the trip by bus, opting to walk back to our place from the Civic Centre, a 30-minute walk.

Sue read and I sat at my computer for most of the rest of the afternoon. We had our little ‘happy hour’ out on the balcony in the late afternoon — there have been literally THOUSANDS of cyclists riding their road bikes out here since early this morning. I hope they have a great morning tomorrow.

At around 7pm I lit the barbecue. Sue made a salad and we had that with our pork tenderloin. It was delicious. After supper we watched a couple of documentaries on Netflix. It was just before midnight when we went to bed.

As busy as it was just outside our apartment all day today, the opposite was true INSIDE our apartment. Not a lot of activity here. Sue did a load of laundry and finished reading her Nelson Mandela book. So she started her next book. I spent all morning looking online at things to do in Cape Town (maybe we’ll actually DO them sometime!) and the afternoon working on web stuff. For a while it looked like we might take the bus out to the Old Biscuit Mill for lunch, but when lunch time had come and gone so did that notion.

There was action on the street below, and even in the garage below our place: I guess a few of the apartments here are available for short-term rentals, AirBnB, and so there were cars with trailers full of bikes unloading and groups of cyclists moving into apartments for this weekend above and beside us.

We finally DID leave the apartment at around 7:30, but only went as far as Mario’s, the Italian restaurant just around the corner from our place. Friday night, and with 35,000 cyclists and their friends and families here for the weekend, EVERY table in EVERY restaurant was busy tonight! Mario’s is an old ‘family’ restaurant, not as ‘hip’ as most of the places around here, and whenever we walk by it it looks ‘quiet’. But tonight it too was packed. We were lucky to get a table. We had a big bowl of mussels as a starter and a wood-fired pizza to share.

And that’s it for today! When we got home I sat out on the balcony and breathed in that cool evening air and listened to the talk and laughter coming from other balconies around our place for a while. And then I went to bed.

All day there was more action than usual down on the street. Something is going on — traffic is backed up all the way up past our apartment, the Main Road down at the corner has constant traffic, the sidewalks are full of people. And it’s only Thursday.

We sat around inside most of the day today. Sue did another load of laundry and made some serious headway on the book she’s reading — she says if she has another good day like this tomorrow she’ll have finished “Long Walk to Freedom”, the Nelson Mandela story she’s been reading for the past week. Speaking of reading, I haven’t been. And that was one of my ‘to-do’ things for this trip! Well, so was drinking red wine, and learning how to tell a shiraz from a merlot — but that hasn’t happened either. At least Sue is getting more informed every day, but me? Like my mother emailed today, ‘what a sad life! all I do is drink beer and watch soap operas.’ I’d like to say that’s not true, so today I didn’t watch any soap operas. So she’s only half right.

So instead of watching more soaps, after another nice skype with Alex and Max late this afternoon, Sue and I headed out to Sea Point for a long walk. LOTS of people out and about. Families, kids, moms, joggers, dogs and their walkers. And folks enjoying sundowners as the sun melted into the ocean. That’s what it does here on the west coast. Every night. And tonight we saw that the preparations are well on the way for a MAJOR sporting event that will take place right here in our neighbourhood this weekend: The Cape Town Cycle Tour – The World’s Largest Timed Cycle Race, when on the morning of Sunday, 6 March, 35 000 cyclists will line up to ride the 109km route through some of the world’s most spectacular scenery that includes the iconic Table Mountain as a backdrop. We will not be riding, but we certainly will be watching from our front-row seats! (more about the race here)

And so we walked a couple of miles down along the coast, turned around and walked all the way back. And more! We continued along the coast all the way back to the V&A. Sue had taken along 2 coupons (still from that discount book that our new friend Helene gave us back in January) for 2-for-1 main courses at a couple of fancy restaurants on the wharf. And tonight we ended up at the Karibou, a restaurant specializing in South African cuisine.

We had a very nice calamari appetizer, followed by Kingclip fish of the day for Sue and a stuffed chicken breast for me. A fancy-shmantsy ice-cream and sticky doughnut thingy dessert for us to share. I won’t mention the wine and beer. And when that cloudy ‘table-cloth’ finally slipped down off the top of Table Mountain we got to see a(nother) spectacular sunset and the colorful lights of the many restaurants that ring the harbour here. We walked back to the apartment under streetlights. It was 8:30.

The patio doors were open. No screens. The ceiling fan was on medium. The noise from the traffic outside had subsided. Linda Ronstadt, Laura Smith, Levon Helm, and Warren Zevon were taking turns singing old favorites on the Sony stereo where my iPod is plugged into. It’s calm, for now. But not for long! Cape Town is getting ready for LOTS of visitors — it will be an exciting weekend here.

It was late in the evening on Super Tuesday in the United States of America when we woke up. It was the dawn of Super Wednesday here in South Africa. We are far away from the noise that is America. We are in a different time zone, in a different hemisphere, in a different world. We do not have the daily reminders about all the nonsense in the world (we don’t have any ‘real’ TV channels in our apartment, and the daily paper I buy from Benjamin down on the street occasionally is mostly about what’s happening in the local rugby and cricket leagues). So while ISIS tries to drag the world back into the Middle Ages and Donald Trump drags America back to the adolescent ages, Rudy and Sue eat their peaches and bananas and peanut butter toast and then drag their clubs across the road and enjoy a round of golf on the manicured greens and lush fairways of Cape Town’s Metropolitan Golf Course. Quiet. Beautiful. Peaceful.

We golfed with a South African (Durban) couple today. Peter and Lynn. Lovely people. Good golfers. After our most relaxed (and quickest — we never waited for the group ahead) round here yet, they invited us to join them upstairs at the clubhouse for a drink. A bottle of white Ernie Els for the ladies, big drafts of craft beers for the gentlemen. Before lunch. Civilized.

We walked home and had lunch at around 2:30. After lunch we checked our email and the news. The silliness of the American primaries just keeps getting more bizarre (and discouraging). Where are all the ‘normal’, educated, decent, thinking, caring, civilized people? Why are they allowing this?

We skyped with the kids. We watched “Labyrinth of Lies”, a German movie (subtitles) — still from my collection of Oscar-nominated foreign films. Very good. Sue made (another) delicious supper. We skyped with Ed and Val, who are enjoying the Arizona heat for the month of March. We watched the first hour of an old movie, Romeo + Juliet, starring a very young Leonardo DiCaprio and Clair Danes. Then we switched to the CBC National before heading off to bed at 10:30.

Just like Bilbo Baggins in “The Hobbit”, today I enjoyed TWO breakfasts! The first one was our usual breakfast, fruit and toast and coffee. Then, after a couple of hours of wasting time reading the news (nothing ‘new’!) I went out for a second breakfast. I was already hungry at 10 o’clock, and knowing that our lunch today would only come at 2 o’clock and I probably wouldn’t last until then, I went out for a muffin and another coffee. I went to a new little cafe just down the street. That was probably a mistake! I ordered a coffee and a blueberry muffin from the menu. A couple of minutes later I noticed my waitress going out the front and down the street. Then she came back. She brought my coffee and informed me that they don’t have any blueberry muffins — would it be alright if I had a cappuccino muffin instead? Sure. Out she went again, returning 5 minutes later with a paper bag. Hmmm.. I guess she went out to buy a muffin for me. But it was at least another ten minutes before she brought me my muffin, (on a plate with a square of butter, a little dish of red jam, and a fork). Ah, I see what she was doing. She “added value” to the muffin she picked up next door. By now I had noticed the sandwich board standing on the sidewalk in front of the neighbouring coffee shop, advertising coffee and a cappuccino muffin for 30 Rand! I should have just gone to THAT restaurant! Oh well, the muffin was good even if I only ate it long after I’d finished my coffee. When I finally got the bill it was 43.50 Rand. “Value added!”

Sue and I headed out at around 1 o’clock. Walked down the main road, back into the city. Along the way we stopped at a car rental shop to see about renting a car. We got to our restaurant, Societi Bistro, right at 2 o’clock. I’d called there yesterday to book it for lunch today. I had come across the (unfortunately named) Labia Theatre, an old small movie house that was showing current movies at discount prices. Movie tickets were only 45 Rand, which is $3.87 Canadian. Not only that, on certain days they offered ‘deals’. The Tuesday deal was you could go to the Societi Bistro restaurant just down the street from the theatre and get 2 pasta main courses PLUS 2 movie tickets for 90 Rand. We were pleasantly surprised at how nice the Societi Restaurant was! and the pasta dishes we ordered were “f-f-FAB-ulous”! So we sat outside in the courtyard, eating our pasta and drinking our wine and enjoying the lovely afternoon and the great view of Table Mountain.

Around 3:30 we wandered down the street to the movie theatre. We ordered a big cappuccino and sat at a small table until our 4 o’clock movie began. (What a life, eh?) We traded in our restaurant receipt for 2 tickets to see the new Coen Brothers movie, “Hail, Caesar!”. We entered Screen 1 (the cinema was showing 4 different movies on 4 screens) and found our seats. We decided to sit one row AHEAD of the other couple that were already seated and awaiting the start of the movie; that left 172 seats still available in case anyone else would show up! For a cheap theatre this one had a pretty big screen. And the seats were relatively new and fairly comfortable. Maybe a bit TOO comfortable for Sue, who promptly slept through a good chunk of the movie! I guess it might have been that carafe of wine, although Sue was adamant that the movie was at fault — NO story, NO plot, NO romance — the WORST Coen Brothers movie yet, etc, etc. Okay, okay — but at least it had a great soundtrack and quite a few funny bits.

We were out at 6 o’clock and slowly walked the 3.5 kms back to our place. Although we both were not really hungry due to that late lunch we’d had, we nevertheless ate a hearty supper — no point in messing up our ‘routine’! And speaking of routine, after supper we got into our positions on the couch and watched the last 2 episodes of Homeland, followed by (yesterday’s) CBC National News before once again heading off to bed.