I looked for a boater in my Cambridge, Oxford and even Venice photos, but not one! So here are some hats for sale in a darling little courtyard in Franschhoek, South Africa. And if you haven’t been there then you are missing a real treat.
Category: South-Africa
three things I love about my favourite city
Cape Town. The Mother City. Crouching beneath the majestic backdrop of Table Mountain in the south-west corner of Africa. Once a tiny stopover for fresh supplies along the trading route between Europe and the Far East, now a buzzing metropolis where the Rainbow Nation welcome visitors with open arms and huge smiles, lots of good food and great wine. You haven’t been there? What are you waiting for?
What do I love most about this city ?
1. The Views
whether it be the sensational all round city and peninsula views you get from taking a cable car ( or climbing if you have the energy) up to the top of Table Mountain, the dizzying view of the coast from the impressive 9km Chapman Peak Drive, with its 114 curves, where you literally hang off the cliff or the wide-open view of False Bay from Boyes Drive down in the Cape Peninsula, you cannot get enough of the scenic landscapes that this city has to offer. It must be one of the most scenically situated cities in the world.
2. The Beaches
now personally I can think of nothing worse than lying on a beach and baking in the sun, but I know many people do like to do that and Cape Town has the most incredible beautiful beaches all around – it is on a peninsula – so you get northern beaches where the wind whips the sand into a frenzy, so perhaps best suited to wind-surfing than sun-bathing; the western beaches which are on the frigid Atlantic coastline so these attract the ‘in’ people who strut their stuff along Camps Bay or Clifton, occasionally playing Frisbee, or volley-ball or more likely be supping bold espressos in the bars lining the beachfront (that’s if you can get parking) OR the fabulous Indian Ocean beaches where the water is warmer and when the surf is up is filled with surfing dudes, wind-surfers, kite-surfers (they stay on the sand not the water) and people like me, who just want a long beach to stroll along. And then there’s the penguins. Now tell me, where else in the world can you visit a beach with resident penguins? And not freeze.
3. Nature
even in the heart of the city you will find the Company’s Gardens. Once literally an allotment where fruit and vegetables were grown to feed the visiting traders, now a little oasis in the city bowl. A serene place to wander through, full of trees and plants, European squirrels and native birds. And the view of that mountain behind you. No-one should come to Cape Town and not wander through this garden. And if you are not a fan of gardens then this is where you will find the ‘Tuynhuys‘ which is used by the President on state occasions (and not open to the public), the ‘Delville Wood Memorial’ and the ‘Rutherfoord Fountain’. This area is known as ‘Museum Mile’ in that the vast majority of Cape Town’s museums are concentrated into the same small space around Government Avenue including the South African Museum and National Gallery and The Iziko Slave Lodge which lies just outside the entrance.
A little further south is Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden. A must see. And you can climb up to the top of Table Mountain from here up through Skeleton Gorge. If that is too much, then feel free to wander around the acres of native flora – proteas, restios, pelargoniums. Did I tell you that the Cape is home to more than 9,000 plant species? No? Well it is.
And finally, the Cape Point reserve. Where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet and the waters surge and crash together making it one of the world’s most dangerous routes to navigate round. The reserve is full of the fynbos that the Cape is known for, it is also home to ostrich, kudu and sable antelope, and baboons. Watch out for the baboons!
So that’s that. My favourite city and three reasons why I like it. No make that LOVE it. Cape Town. The pearl in the African Crown.
Accor Hotels are running a competition to find your favourite city. Cape Town is mine. Which one is yours?
Z is for Zulu Huts
frizztext hosts a weekly A – Z Challenge
Event Type: General Blogging
Start Date: Tuesdays, recurring weekly
Description: Every Tuesday I offer the “A to Z challenge”, walking step by step through the alphabet.
If you would like to join in then please click here
Well this is the end of the A to Z challenge and probably the most tricky letter for me as I haven’t got any buildings or architectural terms beginning with a Z, In fact the only one I can find is a Ziggurat and not having visited Mesopotamia (Iraq and Iran) needless to say I don’t have a photo of one.
So I hope my Zulu huts will suffice! It’s been an enjoyable journey, thinking of interesting buildings around the world for the challenge, and those of you who have followed this from the start, I hope that you have enjoyed it too 🙂
If you want to visit a game reserve in southern Africa, but don’t have deep pockets then do not despair. Addo Elephant Park in the Eastern Cape is a reserve that is home to much more than elephants, and you can stay inside the park in adorable thatched roofed Rondavels, in the style of traditional African huts.
Weekly Photo Challenge: On top
In this week’s challenge, show us a photo that means “On Top”
Some things you find on the top of Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa
1. A snake
2. A Lizard
3. A bird on top of a rock that looks like a meerkat
4. A view
5. And even the curve of the earth
Where have you been on top of the world?
If you would like to see what others have come up with for this challenge then go to the Daily Post @ WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge
A Word a Week Challenge: Frame
Every week Sue from ‘A Word in Your Ear’ dips into her English Oxford dictionary and picks a word on the page that it falls open at. The challenge is to post a photograph, poem, story – whatever the genre you like best to describe what that word means to you.
This week’s challenge is FRAME (click to join in with the challenge)
There are lots of ways to frame a photograph including using branches of trees or shrubs as above when I took this photo of the Helshoogte Pass between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek.
Or you can use a doorway or archway to frame a particularly nice view like this one at the Carbiere Winery in Franschhoek.
Using a tree and part of a wall on the right to frame this lovely whitewashed Drostdy Museum building in Swellandam, I included another tree and smaller sign to use as the left-hand frame.
Another way of framing a photograph is to get some of the foreground into the picture as I did here at Boulders Beach, using the boulders at the right-hand side to create a curved frame around the blue water.
You could, of course, use software to create a different frame around one of your photos – as I did here with a close-up of a cheese shop display to create the old Polaroid effect.
And finally whilst staying in South Africa, I managed to frame one of my obsessions (beach huts) using the round window in the promenade wall.
if you would like to see more of my images of South Africa and read about my travels there then please visit these posts:
TRAVEL WORDS 