Author: Rudy

No bacon and eggs this morning. That’s not how most Saturday’s start — and actually, that’s not quite true for THIS Saturday either. No bacon and eggs AT HOME is more like it. We had our morning coffee but then went for a short walk to the Mouille Point lighthouse — that famous ‘barber-pole’ landmark that’s a 10-minute walk from here. We met Marina at a little cafe overlooking the park and the coast. And THAT’s where we had bacon and eggs. And visited with Marina for a couple of hours. I returned the photo album chronicling her 2002 Atlantic crossing that she’d let me borrow for a few days. Now we had a chance to catch up, to hear about some of the experiences and events of her life during and after that trip.

After breakfast Sue and I continued our walk along the promenade for another mile or two, coming back through Green Park which is right next to ‘our’ golf course. Wow! What a nice park! Lots of people were gathering in groups at picnic tables, quite a few extravagant birthday parties were set up wherever there was a shady spot under a few trees — kind of like Kildonan Park on a summer weekend at home. Our location here really is ideal; we are so close to so many of the best things in Cape Town.

Having such a large (and late) breakfast meant that we somehow or other missed lunch 🙁

Sue read and I worked through an online web tutorial in the afternoon — one way to avoid the heat of midday. We ‘FaceTimed’ with our kids at around 4:15 (that’s 8:15am, breakfast time for them) and then headed back outside. We had to hurry just a bit to get to the V&A and buy our tickets for a 5 o’clock showing of “Suffragette”. Saturday afternoon at the movies is another good way to escape the heat. And the movie was very good — we both enjoyed it a lot.

After the movie we headed out onto the waterfront. It’s like a huge “The Forks” — lots of people, lots of kids, lots of entertainers and music and buskers, lots of restaurants. Some great views of Table Mountain from here. And lots of boats, including sailboats. I remember how we came down here almost daily back in 2002, looking (and hoping) to see ‘our boat’ — the one that never arrived. And as we wandered around we saw more things that brought back reminders of our time here 14 years ago. Familiar sights. One of which was the Hildebrand Ristorante. So we sat down at a table under an umbrella and talked about Ed and Millie and what a nice place they have here!

When we’d finished our pasta and seafood dishes it was around 8:30 and the sun had set. We headed back home. We passed the giant soccer stadium.  A ring of lights from the city circled the base of Signal Hill ahead of us. When we got back to our apartment we opened up the patio door and enjoyed the coolness of the evening with a glass of wine. It’s beautiful here.

We woke up early. Made coffee twice this morning; two cups each. I worked on an illustration trace for most of the morning. Sue went out for a haircut, and a really good one it was (translation: I wouldn’t have noticed any difference if she hadn’t told me). At around 10:30 we sent a text to Marina’s friend Helene that we would be stopping by her apartment on Sea Point to pick up some coupons she’d offered to give us — two-for-one golf and a few restaurant deals from one of those coupon books. By the time we had walked along the promenade all the way to her place she wasn’t home — but she’d left an envelope for us at the front desk. Great.

We continued our walk back towards our place, first stopping at the V&A to get more cash from the ATM. The noon cannon sounded just as I unlocked the door into our apartment. And then lunch was served!

After lunch we restarted the movie we started a couple of nights ago, Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, a Japanese movie about a girl who thinks the movie Fargo is ‘real’. Quiet, subtitles, a little strange, but okay.

After the movie we had our happy hour out on the patio. Sue had emailed Peter about the car registration and we now got an email back reassuring us that all was okay. I watched some guy trying to fill his overheating radiator with water down on the street below our balcony — and he got his nice white shirt and dress pants all sprayed up with anti-freeze when he opened the rad cap. Yeah, little things like that amuse an old guy like me. That, and the traffic jams on our little access road during Friday night rush hour.

Soon after happy hour it was time to think about supper. Where should we go today? Well, it’s Friday — so of course we’ll have pizza. Do you wanna go out? Just as much fun getting takeout and having it here. Okay, where shall we order from? I’ll ask Siri. She suggests Big Route Pizza, just around the corner from our house. TripAdvisor gives it 5 stars! Well! That’s easy enough.

After supper (the wood-fired pizza was as good as the reviews said it would be!) we cued up another Oscar-nominated movie, Carol. We ended the day watching the CBC ‘At Issue’ Panel.

Some days here in Cape Town we do NOTHING — and it’s hard to keep my commitment to write in my journal EVERY day when we basically eat and sleep. Speaking of journals, we start each morning by checking the news, our emails, and a couple of blogs. And this morning, after I made coffee and sat down to ponder the state of affairs like I do every morning, I read the final entry in David Banman’s blog, Flatlander Climbing. We’ve been following his adventures day-by-day and I’ll miss that after today. What a great story. What good writing! Reading his entries makes me want to give up MY blog!

Anyway, as I was saying, some days we do nothing, and some days it pours. Today is one of those days.

We started off the day by hopping into our car and driving out to the Rondebosch Golf Club where we had an 8 o’clock tee time. We were a bit rushed and thought we’d have to fight rush hour traffic, but we got to the course right on time. The starter asked if we were ready to go right away, so that’s what we did. Rudy and Sue, just the two of us, teeing off on Hole #11 (a bit of a weird layout, we’d golf 11 to 18, then have 30 minutes for ‘breakfast’, then golf 1 to 10 to finish the round). And what a great time we had! Never really waiting for the group ahead, never feeling pushed by the group following (in fact, no one behind us for the entire ‘back’ 9!). The temperature was in the low to mid 20s, just enough clouds to keep the sun from baking us, and both of us shooting some fine golf shots. Add to that a ‘breakfast’ of egg and bacon sandwich with french fries (okay, Sue had a muffin and coffee) and a final score of 93 for me (my first 3 rounds in Cape Town were all close to 100, and this was a full par 72 18-hole course!) — well, it was a ‘red-letter day’ all the way!

Back at home shortly after one — Sue made a quick bread and wine run and then we had our sandwiches for lunch.

After lunch we went back to the big Woolworths down the street for a more substantial shopping expedition — mostly groceries and supplies. By 5 o’clock we’d cleaned up the apartment, showered and changed, and were ready for our 6 o’clock meeting at the Hudsons, the burger joint a couple blocks away.

On the way out to the restaurant we got a text from Marina — they’d be a bit late. No problem. Sue and I got our ‘reserved’ table and ordered our drinks and waited for Marina and her brother Rohann to show up. The arrived about 20 minutes late. We’d just said our hellos (we hadn’t seen Rohann since that day 15 years ago when we said goodbye and abandoned the sailing trip) when who walks up to our table but Carol, another of the ones who actually did the crossing in 2002. We’d had dinner’s at Carol’s house, and also spent quite a bit of time with her.

So now we were all here: Marina and her brother Rohann and their friend Carol — the only one missing was Ferdi, the captain. But then again, he was the guy ‘missing’ for most of that month we spent here in 2002! And as it turned out, the South African people had no shortage of stories about Ferdi.

We quickly decided that Hudsons was WAY too loud for us to do any visiting. Marina had brought along a photo album and we were going to look at it together — but we couldn’t really hear ourselves. So we all got up and walked back, heading for our apartment — but along the way we passed a little ‘Simply Asia’ restaurant, perfect for what we wanted. So we pushed together two outdoor tables and spent the rest of our evening there.

We ordered our food and then began visiting. Sue and Carol were at one end of the table, Marina and Rohann and I were at the other. We hardly had time to eat — so much fun reminiscing and catching up.

At some point in the evening Marina’s daughter Emma joined us — her father dropped her off at the restaurant. By 9:15 it was time to say goodbye — but we all agreed to meet again and continue our catching up.

While the others got into their cars and had to drive home, Sue and I walked back to our apartment. It sure looked nice and clean — too bad we never had our visitors over to enjoy it! But we’d had a great visit, and we were actually looking forward to our next one.

Made coffee and had breakfast. Sat around for a couple of hours, working on logos while Sue did laundry. There was a bit of excitement here for a while — I went out to see what all the kerfuffle was all about and learned that there were 2 cobra snakes on top of our roof! Dangerous, too. At least that’s what the girl in the hallway said to me. And her boyfriend was on the phone calling some snake charmer to come and get rid of it. And SHE was calling the SPCA to do the same. And then here comes Warren, the maintenance man, and he too is all excited about the snakes. And down on the street there’s a small crowd gathering on the sidewalk, and they’re pointing at our roof and gesturing away. And the girl in the hallway says that it’s that time of year here, and the snakes are up on the mountain but these two apparently came down into the city and found their way up onto our roof! It makes no sense to me. Warren and the girl head downstairs and out onto the road up the street. The boyfriend and I follow. As we get to the next apartment block we look up and there, about 6 stories up, someone is calling down to us from an open window. “What’s going on down there?” Can you see it? “See what?” There’s two snakes on the roof of our building! “Yeah, I see ’em. You mean those toy snakes?” Toy snakes? “Yeah, they’re just toy snakes!” Well, that figures! It just didn’t make any sense that cobras would crawl up onto the top of our building — what’s there for them? Excitement’s over. The group of onlookers on the sidewalk heard what the guy in the window said and disperse. Everyone feels like an idiot. I see the ‘head’ of one of the toy snakes hanging over the edge of the roof. It’s not moving.

At around 10:30 Sue and I head out. We’re going to walk the Sea Point promenade again. It’s cloudy and cooler today. NOTHING like it’s been here for the past 2 weeks. Great temperature for a long walk. Half an hour into the walk I ask Sue if she has her bus pass. Oh no, I forgot it! Okay, I guess we’re walking all the way home then. Which we do, but we come back along the Main Road instead of along the coast. That way we can stop and browse through a couple of very impressive large grocery stores — and see the fresh muffins on the bakery shelves and smell the coffees in the fancy coffee shops. And keep walking. The 8.5 kms took us a couple of hours to walk, what with all the stops.

Sue made some super sandwiches for our lunch. The rest of the afternoon I was on the computer and Sue was reading. And at one point she says, if old retired people like us can’t spend the day doing nothing but going for a walk and then sitting in the comfort of their home and reading — well, what else is ‘retirement’ about anyway!

At around 4 my computer interrupts me with a FaceTime call — Max and Alex! It was great to visit with them. Then, after our usual happy hour, I went out to the Asian restaurant around the corner and ordered sushi takeout. I didn’t really know what I was all ordering, but when I brought it home and opened up all the containers it turned out pretty good!

And then it was time for the movies. Today I wanted to watch Mad Max: Fury Road. I didn’t REALLY want to watch it — the preview looked like crap. I hadn’t even really heard or seen much about the movie, but now that I have the list of Oscar nominees I noted that this movie was nominated for TEN academy awards, including Best Picture! So really, I felt obliged to see it. Sue had already said she wasn’t at all interested, and I had offered to watch it alone, but now we figured we should at least give it a try. We are old, but not so old that we can’t try new things even if we THINK we won’t like them. Kind of like sushi.

Well, I’m all for relaxing and enjoying the passing of time, but after about 30 minutes of that movie we both couldn’t take it any more! Even RETIRED people don’t have time for that kind of make believe nonsense. And we really did try! But this was such DRIVEL…

So we stopped that movie, and started up another one — Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter. Nothing to action-packed here either! In fact we had to pay attention and follow along with the subtitles. It was WAY better than that first film. But even so, by 9:30 we were both getting too sleepy to continue. So we put it on pause — we’ll finish it another time — and headed for bed. That’s what RETIRED people do.

Got up, made coffee, read the news. Sue made breakfast and wondered why I don’t ever mention the f-f-f-FABulous (Millie’s expression) fruit we eat here in South Africa. And right while she was saying that I was thinking, “What exactly does Sue think is so great about fresh papaya and bananas?” We’re such a good couple…

After breakfast Sue read her book and I worked on a website. Just before 11 we headed out; destination: Bree Street in the City Centre. Google Maps said it was 2.2 kms to get to the part of town where all the ‘cool’ restaurants were. But we stopped at some kitchen stores and some grocery stores along the way and it was probably close to noon by the time we had walked most of the way up Bree Street and decided on a lunch place. And that’s how we found ourselves sitting at a small outdoor table on the sidewalk in front of Bacon on Bree. Guess what they serve there? Well, the folks sitting next to us got a couple of plates with HUMUNGOUS burgers on them — and bacon spilling out from all sides of the bun. I was tempted, but Sue nixed that idea. So we looked at the ‘Breakfast’ choices. And ordered the first two on the menu, eggs and toast for Sue, and some kinda Mexican bean breakfast with a sausage for me (no need for ‘toast’ — bread is much too fattening for me anyway).

So if the Canadian dollar ever goes back up a bit and the hog farmers in Manitoba find themselves needing a new market for their pork, well… I know Ed has ‘schracklich fail schwien’ in his barns, but this bacon joint was serving it up like it was as cheap as oil in Alberta!

On the way home we stopped at some of those stores we’d “browsed through” on our way up and Sue bought a few knick-knacks for the kitchen. Then, once we got close to home, I went to the Ultra Bottle Shop and got a couple of 6-packs of Pilsner Urquell and Sue went to the butcher shop to get some skewers of lamb and beef for tonight’s supper. We got into the apartment at 2:30 — we’d walked just over 7 kms, had a great lunch, and were all set for our supper to boot!

Sue finished her book, Fifteen Dogs, and started her next one. I got going on a new website. No nap today. At around 6:30 it was time for supper. Sue cooked some manicotti and cauliflower while I barbecued the beef and lamb on the ‘braai‘ on our balcony. (The two university boys we golfed with the other day told us that actually a ‘real’ braai involves charcoal, and what we have is just a ‘wannabe’ braai!)

When Sue had the dishes all cleaned away it was time for our evening matinee. Tonight’s feature film was Brooklyn, nominated for 3 Academy Awards. Sue said it was a ‘sappy story’, but she sure enjoyed crying most of the way through it. After the movie we watched CBC’s “The National” on my computer and had some yogurt for dessert. And that’s the way it was today in Cape Town.

After a late night (I stayed up to watch a quarter and a half of the Carolina-Arizona NFL game last night — by which time it was clear that the Panthers would win easily), I slept in a bit this morning. But by 8 o’clock we were sitting in our usual spots drinking our morning Aeropress coffee.

I spent the rest of the day working on some projects on my computer. Sue read. After yesterday’s cloud and rain, the sun was out again today, although not as hot as it’s been. And Sue had had enough of looking out our streaky windows at the action on the street below — she got out a big pail and a bunch of her special micro-fibre cloths and cleaned our windows. And blinds. And now it’s bright and shiny in our place and if you don’t notice the difference then Sue will tell you about it. We made a quick trip to the corner Ultra to buy more libations before lunch.

After we’d eaten our sandwiches we had more of the same: reading and computing. And all that work can really tucker you out — so we had naps too. After my nap Sue and I went down to the Main Road and bought ourselves some ‘ready-to-eat’ meals from the always-busy Giovanni’s Deli just around the corner. Sue zapped our dinners in the microwave and we washed down our fish and chicken dinners with some of that famous South African ‘pinotage’ we’d bought earlier in the day.

And then it was movie time again. First, “45 Years”, a lovely British film — quiet and complex, starring Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling (who is nominated for a Best Actress oscar). We followed that up with the movie “Youth”, starring Harvey Keitel and Michael Caine — and although the movie LOOKED fantastic and had a marvellous soundtrack (a song from the movie is nominated for a Best Song oscar) it was just a little too obtuse and weird for our liking.

And that brought us to the end of another great day in Cape Town.

Light cloud cover this morning as we drove to the golf course — we took the car because we wanted to take our clubs home so we can go to one of the other courses here in Cape Town this week. We had a tee time for 8:17. We were paired up with a couple of young university boys from Stellenbosch. The 20-year-old was a big strapping rugby player; his 23-year-old brother was smaller, but could out-drive the athlete. I finally figured out that the ‘yardage’ on the golf courses here are not ‘yards’ — they are meters. No wonder I was consistently short with my shots. But that made it all the more impressive to watch these two guys hit their drives! On the 16th par 4 the tees were 300 meters from the middle of the green. We’d already witnessed each of the guys drive the green a couple of times — on this hole Heinrich didn’t wait for the foursome ahead to walk off the green and put his 301 meter tee shot just past the hole. The group ahead were not overly impressed, but I sure was!

We got back to our apartment around 1 o’clock. Some of the roads around the big soccer stadium were cordoned off so we had to drive the long way around to get home. As we ate our lunch we watched and listened to the throngs of fans driving past our building on their way to the big Sunday afternoon soccer game. Lots of singing, cheering, honking, and ‘vuvuzelaying‘. Sue read all afternoon and finished her book, ‘Cool Water’. I had a nap.

At around 5 we had a short FaceTime with our kids — they were just sitting down for bacon and eggs. Then we headed out for supper. And we took our sweaters with us! That is a first since we arrived here. It was actually cooling off a bit! We went to Hudson’s, a very busy hamburger restaurant a few blocks from our place. Pretty good. We stopped for gelato on the way home.

Back at home I hooked up my computer to the TV and we watched the movie “Sicario”. Pretty good. It was eleven o’clock when we finished the movie. I turned off the TV. I heard some dripping noises coming from the open window — hey, it’s drizzling. Then I found a video stream online of the first of 2 NFL playoff games on the computer. By 11:30 it was actually raining pretty hard outside! The farmers and the golf courses around here will be VERY happy with that. And it will nicely wash the streets and sidewalks clean.

It was 1:30AM when the backup quarterback for the Denver Broncos (Peyton Manning) finally took his team to the Superbowl, beating Tom Brady’s Patriots in a close game — worth staying up late to watch!

News of the day: Tim’s sister Carrie had a baby girl!

I went to the bakery to buy a fresh loaf of bread this morning — to go with the bacon and eggs Sue made for breakfast. Then it was time to clean up the place. Sue swept the deck, washed the floors, cleaned the barbecue. By the time that was done it was time for lunch! Leftover pizza from last night — just as good the second time around.

After lunch we went for another long walk around Green Point Park. We again ended up at the V&A Mall. I went to see a movie (“The Revenant”) while Sue shopped for sandals (she’d heard the movie was quite violent and didn’t want to see it). The movie was more than 2.5 hours long (but excellent!) and when I came out of the theatre there was Sue sitting and having a nice big cappuccino in the theatre’s cafe. We went out into the big square outside the mall — the sun was warm, but not as hot as it has been here most days. People were enjoying the live music and watching the children playing.

We walked back to the apartment, making a pit-stop at the butcher shop to pick up half a dozen skewers of chicken. After happy hour and then got supper ready — our first ‘Braai’ (that’s what they call a BBQ in South Africa). And that little Weber on our deck did a very nice job! We ate out on the deck too, watching the people and cars going by, a refreshing cool breeze coming in from the ocean, listening to music emanating from some of the cars on the street and other apartments around us — we sat out there until the sun was down and the (nearly) full moon was shining brightly.

And then it was time to go inside and crank up another movie, “Trumbo”. It was 11 o’clock when the movie ended — and time to go to bed. Got an early start again tomorrow: 8 o’clock tee time at the Metropolitan.

After breakfast we went out for a long walk — first to the Green Point lighthouse (behind the golf course) and then all the way back to the V&A waterfront mall. We tried one of the four ATMs in front of the Pick’nPay store in the lower level and were able to take out 5000 Rand — 2 thousand more than the maximum allowed on any of the ATMs around our place. Plus, we were relieved to know that our bank card was working again. I also bought a lighter adapter so we could charge my iPhone in the car — and avoid running out of battery with our ‘GPS’ next time we take a drive. Just after the noon cannon shook the place (really! it’s up on the hill behind our apartment and you can hear it all over Cape Town), we headed back home.

After lunch (sandwich for me and some kind of homemade rice concoction Sue made for herself), we took our maps and my new USB-lighter-charger and went down to the garage.

Our destination was Stellenbosch. Along the way we stopped to check out 2 golf courses not far from our place — Mowbray and Rondebosch. Both had plenty of ‘public’ tee times available. So that is an option for us as we move forward.

Then we drove past some SERIOUS shanty-towns and made our way out to Stellenbosch, about 45 minutes away. Once there, we parked near the tourist information centre and wandered into the centre of town. There is a big shopping area downtown — and as strolled around we remembered some of the shops and the layout of the mall and the adjacent parking lot from when we were here in the fall of 2001, staying in Franschhoek and would make day trips to Stellenbosch.

After a couple of big cappuccinos and a McFlurry at the McCafe we headed into the mall and wandered around until we found the Woolworths store. Sue was looking for sandals. Eventually we got out of there and found our way back to the Volvo. We google ‘Home’ and the darn phone guides us back to Cape Town, then THROUGH Cape Town, and up along the ‘High Street’ behind our place, and right into our garage. Whew!

We had our happy hour on the deck and then I queued up one of my movie downloads. After we’d watched our movie (“Anomolisa”) we headed out into town — and found ourselves in another of the many restaurants on our street. We ordered mussels, an avocado salad, and shared a pizza — after all, it’s Friday night.

Back at our house we sat at our devices for a while. Opened the patio door to let a big breeze blow some moderating temperatures through the apartment.

I wrote my nightly blog entry, but I must have been sleeping while I was doing it! When I suddenly sat up, awake again, and read what I’d just written, I had NO idea what or why I’d written that — and some of it made no sense at all! I read it aloud to Sue. She laughed and said I’d better “un-post” it. Which I did. I fixed it up a bit and “saved” it, and quickly headed off to bed before I had any second thoughts about what I just “published”.

Woke up at 6, had a quick breakfast, and then hurried across the Main Road and the 10-minute walk to ‘our’ golf course. This morning we bought a 10-pack of ‘vouchers’ at the Metropolitan Golf Club. That gets us a discount for the next 5 outings. The morning was very pleasant — not too hot, a light cool ocean breeze. We were joined on the first tee by Simon, a young man originally from London, now working and living here in Green Point. We had a fairly slow round, but did quite a bit of visiting along the way. On the second fairway, after a very good (for me) drive, I took out my 3-wood and crushed the ball. Unfortunately I also crushed the wing and ribcage of one of the many big birds that were sitting and grazing on the course — not only did my ball stay right there on the grass, about 15 yards from where I’d hit it, but I think that poor bird won’t have survived much more than another day.

By the time we finished our 18 holes it was quite a bit warmer. We stayed at the clubhouse for lunch and then walked back home. Gin & tonics and a couple of Netflix episodes of Narcos — only two left and we’ve completed our first series.

We left the apartment at around 4:30 — Sue had a short grocery list. I wanted to take out more cash — but the ATMs didn’t like my card today. We used up almost all of our cash to pay for the groceries. On the way home we were met by Warren, our ‘maintenance’ man at the apartment. Now HE needed a bit of cash to pay for his electricity at home! But we are OUT of cash! Back inside our apartment Sue managed to ‘find’ some extra Rands and ran downstairs to give that to Warren.

So, instead of picking something up for supper, Sue ate her leftover Thai food and made me a sandwich and salad. That was okay too. We called the SCU to ask about our debit card — but all seems to be in order. We’ll try that again tomorrow.

After supper, at around 7pm, we settled into our usual spots and finished watching the ‘Narcos’ series. After that Sue sat and read while I did some computer work. Went to bed early — tired.