A Long, Long Time Ago - Katie Went to Cape Town

Saturday Feb. 9 - Sunday Feb 10

A little over a month ago, I went to Cape Town with a tour guide and some of the people that traveled here with the same study abroad program I did.  We saw some of the city, but we mostly saw attractions from the outside.  We only went into one museum, everything else we just walked by and made a mental list of places we wanted to come back to.  After that trip, 4 of my friends decided that we should go back and actually go into the places we saw and learn more about the city and South Africa in general.  We made a reservation at one of the hostels on Long Street, which is the main street in Cape Town and took the train to Cape Town early Saturday morning, February 9^th.  Unfortunately, it rained, (for the second time since I got here), almost the whole day.  After our hour train ride, we got off and headed towards the Castle of Good Hope.  This was the fort that Jan van Riebeeck and the Dutch East India Company built after their landing in the Cape area in 1652.  The fort is pentagonal and now contains several museums.  There is an art museum, military museum and one that was full of antique furniture.  We walked around these for maybe two hours and then headed out to walk around town.  We ate lunch at a cafe, (everyone was really cranky and food was very much necessary).  We walked around some markets that sell African knickknacks like bracelets, paintings, clothes and wood carvings.  We passed by City Hall where Mandela gave a famous speech when he was released from prison in the early 1990s.  Then we went to the National Gallery.  This was an art museum that had some older paintings, mostly of horses and some interesting more modern art and sculpture.  They also had a room of prints of Apartheid Era protest art.  These were really interesting to look at.  The pain, suffering and frustration of the oppressed people was evident in all of the prints.

Because the day was so rainy, we decided it would be fun to see a movie.  There is a famous movie theater in Cape Town called the Labia, (awkward name for a movie theater), that we thought would play more artsy movies but we ended up seeing Life of Pi.  If you haven’t already seen it, I highly recommend it.  After watching the movie, I decided that I need to read the book at some point.  It was such an interesting plot line, with avery surprise ending.  We had dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant, where we got to eat with our hands and ate a bunch of different dishes that were the consistency of baby food.  It was a little strange, but there was a good atmosphere and it was such an interesting cultural experience that the slightly strange taste was looked over.

We spent the night in a hostel on Long Street which is the main street in Cape Town that has all the bars and night clubs.  We had had a really long day, so we just watched the action from our shared balcony and then went to sleep listening to the soothing lullaby of about 4 different pounding bass lines from various bars close by.

In the morning, we dined at a cafe, and started our day with a walk though the Company Gardens which originally were the gardens planted by Jan van Riebeeck and the Dutch East India Company that supplied the colony with produce and other goods.  Today, they are just beautiful gardens, with very tame “wildlife.”  I thought the squirrels at St. A’s would let you get pretty close to them, but I actually got to touch a squirrel's tail - they were not as soft as I thought they were going to be.

For the rest of the afternoon, I wandered the Jewish Museum that described the story of the Jewish people in South Africa and their immigration from Eastern Europe at the turn of the 19^th century.  We were going to go to the Holocaust Museum, but we didn’t have time.  I have heard several people tell me that this was a great museum and it is definitely on my list of things to do when I make my way back to Cape Town at some point.  We went to the planetarium at the South African Museum, (basically a natural history museum), and got our star charts - which came in very handy the following weekend, but that’s another post.  One of my friends here is studying photography and there was a temporary exhibit of the best wildlife photos taken last year so we wandered through that for over an hour.  The photos were beautiful!  I’m not sure what was in the rest of the museum, but it too is on my list to do when I visit the city again.

After that, we took the train back home.  The weekend was really fun.  It was nice to actually go to some museums and learn a little more about the history.  South Africa has such a long and complex history, and although I’m taking a South African History course, reading the material in a different setting was still really helpful.  We also had a really good mix of activities which kept the weekend fun and exciting.

Anyway, enjoy the following pictures!! 

The Castle.  I though that this castle was a little strange looking.  For one thing, the walls were relatively short - maybe 12 feet tall.  That seemed like pretty poor construction to me.

Dinner!  The food we ordered was served on a giant platter that was covered in some type of bread product.  I don't remember the name.  You also got a bowl of the same bread that had been rolled into tubes.  The idea was that you take a piece of the bread and use that as the vehicle to move the chicken or chickpea mush from the platter into your mouth.  The bread was kind of sour, (but not like sourdough), but it was a fun idea using bread as a replacement for utensils.

Yay!!  A jump of joy for the opportunities I've been fortunate enough to have!! Long Street is in the background.  We shared this balcony with the other rooms in the hostel.  This was the first time I have ever stayed in hostel, but it worked out really well.  It was super cheap, the beds were comfortable and we only saw one cockroach!  Some hostels are just giant bunk rooms where everyone is in one room, but we ended up getting a room with 3 bunk beds which was really nice.

This was a playground outside of the Jewish and Holocaust museums.  Obviously I couldn't just pass by without climbing it and taking two minutes on the swing.

The backside of the National  Gallery.

Some friends.  I took some crumbs from the peanut butter sandwich I had packed and we fed the pigeons.  They really liked Danny.

I'm sending some spring your way!!!

This was the inside of the newer synagogue in Cape Town.  I got to go into the oldest synagogue in Cape Town which was converted into the first room in the Jewish Museum, but this was one built a few years ago.  There was a man in the synagogue that talked to us about the history of the Jews in South Africa.  He was very well educated and quite the character   He could have talked for days and loved every minute.