The Bahblog

Sunday was a bit of a lazy day. We went for a morning run along the waterfront (we can run outside here!) and then grabbed a nice brunch at Jason Bakery. We split a twice-baked raspberry-almond croissants. I didn't know you could bake croissants twice, but whomever discovered this deserves an award.

After brunch we walked down to Mojo Market. Mojo Market is in Sea Point (about a 40 minute walk from where we are - Green Point) and is filled with food vendors. It was filled with both locals and tourists. It reminded me a bit of Burough Market in London, but it's easier to navigate and indoors (both would be major benefits in London). We weren't super hungry after breakfast, so we grabbed beers, listened to live music, and promised ourselves we'd come back for dinner.

We then went stand-up paddle boarding along the Cape Town canals!! We both love paddle boarding and went paddle boarding a couple times a week during the Madison summers. In fact, one criteria for our new apartment in Seattle is that it have reasonably easy access to water. We saw some paddle boarders when we were having drinks one evening and discovered stand-up paddle boarding in Cape Town! The canals connect to the ocean via a dam, but are very calm and don't have much boat traffic (boats, except for the City Sightseeing Boat) are prohibited. It was a lovely, peaceful paddle. The water was calm and clear, the sun was shining, and we soaked up every minute of it and decided that we should always skip North American winters.

It was at this point in the day, specifically when we got back to our AirBnB, that we discovered "load shedding." South Africa has quite a few infrastructure problems, specifically surrounding electricity. Load shedding is when they deliberately turn off power for a period of time to prevent demand from exceeding supply. Our AirBnB had no power, which meant to no working elevator, which meant we had to climb up the seven flights of stairs. We didn't want to hang out in the dark so we held true to our promise and walked back to Mojo Market.

We had a delicious dinner!! I had a pork belly wrap and Nate had a springbock wrap. Both were fantastic! We washed these down with some local beers and watched the market crowd. There were definitely other tourists there, but I would estimate about 70% of the people were locals. We truly felt like we were Cape Tonians for the evening and it reminded us of why we travel (as if we needed a reminder). To cap the night off, we walked down to the beach and watched the sunset.

On Monday we did a wine tour, which Nate will write about soon. Tuesday was another relaxed day (we had to recover from the wine tour) and we started the day with a bike ride. Actually, we started the day by waking up to no power and then spending 45 minutes trying to figure out how the bikes work, pumping up the tires, and figuring out how to lock them, but then we actually rode them!! We rode along Main St. and then along the waterfront and it was gorgeous. There were a few container ships heading out of Cape Town and it was neat to watch. Cape Town is truly a beautiful city and we are loving every minute of our time here.

We had planned to grab coffee at our favorite coffee shop after the bike ride, but the power was still off in our neighborhood. The local grocery store has a generator and we were able to buy coffee there. We were thinking that we could keep our bikes in the lobby until the power came back on, but the doorman said he wouldn't be able to watch them for more than a couple minutes (completely understandable). Thus, we continued our workout by carrying our bikes up seven (!!) flights of stairs. The power came on literally the second we walked into the door of the apartment because that's how these things work.

We spent the rest of the day exploring Bo Kaap and Bree Street. Bo Kaap was the original Muslim neighborhood in Cape Town and is still predominantly Muslim. It is filled with colorful houses, lots of charm, and an amazing spice store.

Bree Street is a hip street in downtown Cape Town. We poked into shops here and there and grabbed some local beers.

We uber'd back to our apartment and discovered that we didn't have power again. We don't mind the load shedding because we don't have a strict schedule we need to be following or work that needs to be done, but I can't imagine what it's like if you live here. The cell networks are incredibly slow because everyone is forced to use their phones, but people here just seem to shrug their shoulders and say "this is Africa."

We grabbed dinner at a restaurant down the street and took advantage of the fact that we were in South Africa with our food selections (meaning we ate a lot of meat). It was delicious and I'm currently drinking a South African Cabernet as I write this.