Gardens

We were up at a reasonable time this morning, ready to move over to the other branch of Never@Home in Kloof Street. We booked an Uber to take us there with all of our luggage 🧳. When we got there, we were too early to check in, so we stored our bags, and after some discussion, we decided to get City Sightseeing bus tickets and go back to the waterfront for lunch. There is hardly anything open in the city on a Sunday!

Outside Never@Home, we saw the truck and met the crew - Laban, our guide, Patrick, our driver, and Henry (H), our chef. All three are from Kenya 🇰🇪 and have just completed the trip from Nairobi down to Cape Town. They all seem really nice! The truck is more like an old Dragoman truck with a couple of tables that seat 4.

At the waterfront, we went to Cape Town Fish 🐟 Market. Mark had a False Bay seafood platter, and I had chicken schnitzel.

After lunch, we had a last walk🚶‍♂️around the waterfront markets and shops before boarding the bus to do the blue route again. It hadn't been part of the plan, but we had a few hours to kill, and Mark's legs weren't very good, so it was the perfect solution. It was very pleasant to drive along the spectacular coast road again on a sunny afternoon 😎.

Back at Never@Home load shedding meant that there was no power. We had forgotten that load shedding even existed here! We've had no issues since we've been in Cape Town
and assumed that it was the same city-wide. But no, it turns out that it's only in Green Point that the power stays on! I've no idea why!

We checked in, left most of our luggage in the storage room, and went to our room. We were so glad we had decided to stay in Green Point for the whole time we were in Cape Town! Our room had bare concrete floors and no heating. It was very cold! There was no TV, no storage space, only one socket in a very inconvenient place, and the safe was on a very high shelf and totally inaccessible! The bathroom was very small compared to the one we had had in Green Point.

We went downstairs to the bar, which was open to the street and consequently very cold. They couldn't make me a coffee as the power was off, and they had no sugar-free soft drinks! Mark ordered a beer 🍺 (10 rand more expensive than the other branch!), and I went across the road to Starbucks for a coffee ☕️ 🙃. We were not impressed with Never@Home Kloof Street at all and were glad we were only here for one night!

At 6pm, we went to reception for our welcome meeting. We had to go outside, so Laban kept it brief as it was rather cold 🥶! We gave our insurance details and introduced ourselves. There are 21 of us in the group, so it will be a full truck! I'm not sure how we'll manage after the luxury of all the space we had on the last leg!

We are a mixed group - 3 other Brits, 5 Australians, a couple from New Zealand, some Canadians, a Danish lady living in Spain, 2 Americans, a Russian, and a few others that I don't know about yet! 😀 We are definitely not the oldest in the group, which is nice!! 😂🤣

Laban explained about tomorrow, and then we went our separate ways. We ended up going for dinner with John and Trisha from New Zealand 🇳🇿. We didn’t really need a full meal, but went along with it 😀. Mark had ostrich steak, and I had chicken curry 🍛. Both were very good. Two restaurant meals in one day - we won't be making a habit of it! The company was good, though.

We had a pleasant evening before going back to the room to listen 🎶 to Elton John performing live at Glastonbury. He was closing the whole festival. It will probably be his last concert in the UK before he gives up touring for good. It was a fantastic set! We thoroughly enjoyed it - but it meant that we didn't go to bed until after midnight! Luckily, we haven't got an early start tomorrow 😀.Okumaya devam et