Cape Town day 1...another craft shop?

We arrived in a cape town last night and were met at the airport by our guide Rob. Rob is a native of Cape Town, an engineer by trade but now is a guide and has his own picture framing company. He has been lovely. He knows so much about the history of the county. He is very passionate about the new south Africa. When we got to the hotel Moira was waiting for us. We ended up having quite an interesting exchange of who's on first around room numbers..for the record,Moira and Cynthia are in 102 and Sharon and I are in 104 right next door.

After an amazing breakfast at the hotel (who knew there was such a thing as fresh strawberry juice) we met up with Rob. We were supposed to go to table mountain but the winds were too high so we ended up in the botanical gardens which were huge and amazing. He kind of tricked us into climbing up part of the mountain by walking up very gradually. The view was spectacular. Once we finished the walk we stopped at the first of what would be many gift/craft shops.

After the shopping he took us on a drive through downtown Cape Town where we saw some lovely Victorian buildings including the old fort which was in the shape of a pentagon. There were flags in order of rule flying from the building starting with the British and culminating with the new flag of South Africa! We even saw the balcony where Nelson Mandela spoke from after his release. And then we went to another craft store...

Rob then took us to the Malay section of CT. The Malay people were brought over as slaves originally. This part of town has several historic mosques and all of the stucco houses are painted candy colours like pink and purple and yellow and blue. It is so beautiful. He then took us to a cape Malay restaurant which served curries and the best samosa ever for lunch.

After lunch rob dropped us off and the others went shopping for...crafts.

I met up with them a bit later for a drink. We had dinner at a traditional SA BBQ place that was incredible. The wine especially was delicious. After dinner we stopped to pick up another bottle of wine but got distracted with..a craft store. Note to future travelers...you can not buy a bottle of wine after 8pm..they wall off that section of the store.

That is about it for today unless someone decides to stop at another craft store!!