Saturday Spot: A Truth About Cape Town an a Wintry Wander through the Waterfront…

I have blogged about the Waterfront before… and I have blogged about winter… Seriously we are not good at winter over here… and as we head for the home straight and there is a hint of spring in the air, we tend to get worse at it. After weeks and weeks of rain we can no longer deny the cold drippiness of winter, we can no longer pretend there are sunny skies or that the laundry gets dry… We had an hour or two spare in the city yesterday so we headed to the Waterfront for an amble…

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Not only was the sky grey and cold… but the only brightness in the day was the crate man… wearing South Africa’s medals!!!

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The Hoods were hooded!!!

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And take a look at Cape Town in the Winter… see if you get it!!!
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Crystal clear…
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Ships in hibernation…
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The view as ever beautiful!!!
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Maps to find your way around…
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Looking for our favourite mountain…

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But it was under the blankets…
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There were elephants…

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And crocs…
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And shoppers…
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And families…

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All at The African Trading Port…
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There were little boats…
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And one we know well… The Ocean Explorer…
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And the Clock Tower…

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And museums we haven’t explored yet…

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Some frozen birds…

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And the carousel…
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My kids have never seen this before…
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Talk about magical…
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The carousel was a real stop and look at every detail kind of a thing…
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They loved it…
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We stopped to look at the GateWay to Robben Island…
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We spotted a miner…
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And heaps of paintings of our friend…
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Now let’s just mention this is the Waterfront… Cape Town’s premier tourist spot… crammed with folk all year long A place where you can hardly move for the crowds.

We had some races to try and warm up…

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Plenty to look at…

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Tugs tugging…
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We stopped for a bite…
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Lunch in the freezing cold…
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Let’s just say freezing…
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So very, very cold…
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But we did find one friendly face…
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We stopped to look at our Nobel Peace Prize Laureates…
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And yes that’s Madiba and he is looking at a very interesting Historical site: the Time Ball… We are going to have to take a closer look at that!!!
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We headed indoors… and discovered lots of folk…
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Even a couple of smiling faces… but you have to look for them…
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Even the play park…
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Was somewhat…
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Deserted…
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That’s it… the truth about Cape Town in the middle of winter…

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We don’t go out in the cold… just not!!! I had a lecturer at varsity and she wasn’t local, she could never understand why the class was empty… totally empty, whenever it rained. Simple. Not only do we deny the winter… and pretend our world is about sunny skies… but on days that aren’t exactly sunny… we hibernate!!! Lesson learnt, if you want to people watch in Cape Town – then miserable mid-winter is just not the best time for it!!!

13 Replies to “Saturday Spot: A Truth About Cape Town an a Wintry Wander through the Waterfront…”

  1. Indeed – just NOT. If I did not absolutely HAd to get to work on rainy mid-wintery days, I would very happily stay under the covers and hibernate!

  2. Oh Irene, so with you on hibernation… And we do get madly optimistic every single time we hear August, even September… but I know the wait for those warm days is still quite a while and Cape Town will remain quite deserted for weeks still!!! Hope you have a great week!!!

  3. Hay Tammy, it is the sweetest little play park, between The Red Shed and the Aquarium… I imagine it is positioned there for lots of families visiting either the Red Shed or the Aquarium and great spot for tired little people to really stretch their legs for a couple of minutes before moving on. I imagine hectic in summer – but totally empty now!!!

  4. I never realized that a long sleeved vest and a hoodie does not equal being warmly dressed at all until we came to Canada. Why oh why do we not wear warm clothes in SA in winter?? For crying out loud it is as cold inside as it is outside. It must be as you say, utter denial!
    Hope you get some sun soon!!

  5. Hay Corli… It has been so so cold… and I see in the photographs one of my kids – the chef… is running about in his chef shirt… like one cotton layer and it was about five degrees celsius. Yes we are mad… and no we have no idea how to dress for cold!!! I have learnt to smother our bed in about a millions blankets at night and the hot water bottle queue is something to be seen!!! And we got a heap of mail from you guys yesterday – so so so so excited!!!

  6. I had to smile at the comments about the cold…I live outside of Chicago and when it reaches 5C (which is about 41F for us) in the springtime we are all thrilled and run around without our heavy coats! I have to say though, as I get older , it is not until 75F that I really start to thaw out. I am NOT looking forward to another cold winter, ours is just a few short months away!

    Good luck with your boxes!!! I can’t wait to see how you end up organizing it all! I had a new Core 100 and Core E to sort through this year and took me half a day…and I was alone lol!

    I have a question for you. Do you have any journal prompts you use with your oldest? My 14 y/o daughter is a fabulous writer, but every time I try to get her to write in a journal she refuses saying the ideas are all too young and silly. Maybe I should just give up and let her write all on her own. So hard to know what to do sometimes!

  7. Oh Lauren… We are such wimpy bunch over here and so used to sunny skies… I have to say that when there is a hint of rain we head for the covers!!! And we have no idea about dressing for the cold… a hint of cold and we will just wear a long sleeved shirt rather than the usual T-shirt!!! I wrote about our daily writing rhythm in this creative writing post… usually we do all our writing together around the table. I will be posting about our boxes next week – we are just too busy enjoying them this week… Totally jumped right in!!!

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