Day 16 – Completing the Checklist
I woke up (relatively) early, at 9:15, and was out of the
hotel by 9:30, before my friend was awake, wanting to grab a coffee.
Eventually, we met up at 10am to have breakfast at Ginja, the restaurant
outside the Albert Hotel that has the pristine view of Table Mountain. There
was little choice I was going to do anything else. The activity plan for the
final full day of the trip was trying to maximize my time looking at or hiking
on that beautiful mountain, the most unique feature of a uniquely brilliant
city.
The trip up Table Mountain was the final key aspect of the
trip from a tourism perspective, literally so for my friend who had to catch a
flight to Frankfurt that night. There was some debate to do this on Wednesday,
which was pushed for some reason I now forget, but luckily so, as Wednesday was
the only day of our trip to have the cloud cover that so often cascades over
Table Mountain – I think on my last trip in 2016 it happened every day. This
time, the views of the mountain, and ultimately from the top of the mountain,
would remain unobstructed.
However, there were a few things to complete first, be it
meals, some token shopping, and just wandering around various outposts of the
city, and for me the best sunset viewing spot I’ve ever been to in Signal Hill.
The shopping was mainly done at the V&A Food Market, where I got a few
craft beers (sadly, Milk & Honey is impossible to obtain in bottle form, no
matter how much I prod their wait staff), and yet another honey, which is
slowly becoming equal to my fiendishness of collective coasters. I don’t even
really put honey on too many things, and I’m sure the ones I’ve bought in
Poland, Vancouver, Salt Lake, etc., have probably been consumed mostly by
people who aren’t me.
The next stop was The Watershed, which is a bit less
attractive as a knick-knack and craft emporium this time than it was in 2016,
mainly because of their lack of unique coasters. I almost left with nothing,
but in the end gave in and got some wood coasters with carvings of the Big 5;
basically this ‘collection’ has turned into an ‘addiction’ where the quality of
the coasters I get have slipped precipitously.
Anyway, I did get a couple small things that will likely be
shoved into some drawer, the only useful item I picked up is an apron with a
nice African design – another piece to use in some future large kitchen that is
decidedly multiple years away. Anyway, the shopping was never going to be a key
aspect of the trip.
With the time we had, I coaxed my friend into having one
last Milk & Honey (he is a fan as well) before we set-off for lunch and
then Table Mountain. This will likely not be my last – I’ll try to squeeze one
in tomorrow before I head to the airport (sad face).
Lunch was at Seabreeze, the last place we booked ahead of
time. Seabreeze is a seafood join that is light, airy on the inside, another
perfectly designed restaurant. My food tastes (along with my budget) has
greatly increased since 2013 (my first time to Cape Town), and probably even
significantly so since 2016, and I have to say I have been incredibly impressed
by these restaurants. Of course, I have to admit it helps that the current exchange
rate makes these places quite affordable as an American.
Seabreeze had another menu where it was hard to whittle down
what I wanted. I got Hake Ceviche African Style as a starter (in the end, not
really too much different than South American style, but still great), and then
a strange named African fish (to be honest, forget the name) that was
excellent, with its soft skin soaking up the asparagus puree underneath it. The
meal was fairly filling, enough so that I forewent even a customary after meal
coffee. Also, time was getting a bit tight with Table Mountain and a potential
wait to ride the cable car ahead of us.
In the end, that wait never came; Table Mountain was far
less crowded than I was expecting. It is more popular in the morning, but still
for a weekend I was surprised that we didn’t have to wait at all for the Cable
Car. The Cable Car itself is really fast, probably a three minute ride. What is
nice is the floor of the cable car rotates so everyone gets a full 360 degree
view of the mountain ahead and the city we are leaving behind.
It is hard to really describe the views from the top of
Table Mountain. The area around the cable car station has about a dozen various
lookouts and overhangs that all create incredible views, be it of Cape Town Central
directly below, the Winelands further North, the other mountains and peaks
leading southwards to Cape Point, or Camps Bay. What we wanted to do on this
visit is the trail to Maclear’s Beacon, which sits at the highest point of
Table Mountain, a 45-min trek through mostly rock from the main cable car area.
This is a popular trail so there were constant people ahead to pave the way as
the first half of it has few signs, trust is needed that the widest rocks are
the next ones to go to.
The trail to Maclear’s Beacon is actually a bit
underwhelming for the first half, but after it intersects with Platterklip
Gorge Trail (the one main trail to hike up Table Mountain – I’ll pass) it opens
up Southward and the rest of it includes incredible views all the way of the
rocks southward to Cape Point, False Bay, some small towns, and on and on. The
only negative point is you have to trek across some unmarks area to go from the
Beacon to the cliff-side to get any view of Cape Town city, but the views of
the bay to the other end more than make up for it.
The most incline at any point as a few small areas that go
up 40 or so feet, but on the whole it is fairly flat. It doesn’t have the
ridiculous beauty at times that the Pipe Track had, or the lush greenery of
trail I took on Wednesday near Constantia Nek & Kirstencbosch. But instead,
it has the airiness of being so high up. If you are going to go up Table
Mountain, you may as well take the extra 90 minutes to trek across it.
Back on solid ground, we made our goodbye and I headed to
the one hill in Cape Town that to me has a better return than Table Mountain,
and this one is free. Signal Hill is the smallest of the four peaks in the city
(Table Mountain, Lion’s Head, and a 4th one that I can’t recall),
but that gives it a great advantage: you get a view of the others. There is no
better place to get panoramic views of Cape Town, the same you get on top of
Table Mountain, but with this you get the advantage of having Table Mountain in
them.
I came here in 2016 on a lark Googling good sunset spots or
some shit, but it was amazing then and was amazing now. There’s a nice area
facing West towards the sun-set where they have a large tarp laid out where
tons of people and couples and groups were all taking in the sun-set, full BYOB
style. This is a perfect sunset, and as the sun goes down, the magic of the
views only increase. I had long planned to go to Signal Hill at least once on
the trip, and it was just as good as I remembered.
For my dinner, I decided to head back to Miller’s Thumb.
After having two prior trips where I wanted to go to it each time and missed
out each time, I was ready to make up for past misses. The wait-staff were
mostly the same (including my waiter), and the owner was there again, both
pleased to see as rapid a return customer as possible, and curious as to why.
When I told them my previous near-misses with the place, they were quite
impressed about my clove of Cape Town and persistence.
The food was as good the second time around, and the
decidedly more low-key environment than the Pot Luck Clubs or Janse & Co’s
of the world adds to its overall charm.
I got calamari bravas (essentially whole calamari tubes cooked in a
really nice bravas sauce with ginger, peppers, tomatoes and the like), and then
Dorado (a South African fish) in a Moroccan preparation which was excellent, if
a little bigger than I was expecting. For dessert, it was a perfectly cooked
pecan pie with lemon ice cream (near sorbet) on top. Everything was excellent.
There are many restaurants that will be mainstays of future Cape Town visits,
but Mitchell’s Thumb will go to the top of that list.
After dinner, I headed back to the hotel for a quick R&R
before heading out to Long Street for one last night. I initially planned to go
to Shimmy Beach Bar, a restaurant by day open-air club by night, a place I went
to on my 2013 trip, but while that was fun then, it was a younger, more typical
clubby crowd. Long Street of course has typical clubs with their typical clubby
crowds, but generally they have cooler more low-key spots.
It took me until post-dinner to realize this was my first
real Saturday in Cape Town. In 2013, I left Saturday Morning, on an ill-fated
flight to Bangkok and ultimately Vietnam, during which I fell very ill and
barely held on to my faculties before throwing up violently on the flight to Ho
Chi Minh. In 2016, I also left on Saturday afternoon, on a far less dramatic,
but still annoying two-leg flight back to New York on Egyptair. This time, I
decided to risk it all by flying back home reaching early Monday morning, so I
got a full day on Saturday, and an opportunity to experience Saturday Night in
Cape Town.
In the end, Cape Town on a Saturday isn’t too different than
Cape town on a Friday. Both days were surprisingly less crowded than First
Thursday, which apparently was not a surprise to a couple people I spoke to, as
First Thursday generally gets so packed to tame down the following days. So in
other words, I’m a monster for not taming down, but then again, they have next
weekend in Cape Town; for me it may be another few years.
