Friday, June 25
Cape Town, RSA
After yesterday’s long day, and due to the increasing intensity of Jeannette’s illness, we slept in. We watched recaps of all the different soccer games on TV and then we filled out our World Cup schedules with all the updated information on who was playing who, when – now that many of the Round of 16 matches were set.
We decided to head to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. Carol highly recommended the Tea Room, one of the restaurants on site there. After we ate, we explored some of the grounds and saw some amazing South African flora. It was unbelievable how gorgeous their flowers are, even in the dead of winter.
We met up with Claire and Alistair nearby at Foresters Arms Pub to watch the 4pm games, specifically the Brazil-Portugal game. It was wicked packed with young people and a fun place to watch the game. We all wanted to catch a good dinner before the next two games started at 8:30pm. Claire & Ali took us to Miller’s Thumb, knowing there were no TVs, but enough time and super good South African seafood. We had all sorts of good food: springbok carpaccio, kingklip, and cape salmon. We headed right across the street to Rafiki’s to watch the Spain-Chile game. For the first half we could only find seats in an outdoor, but enclosed, smoking section. It wreaked havoc on Jeannette’s cold. But we maneuvered for great indoor (non-smoking) seats before the start of the second half. During the second half, two of Claire’s friends met up with us, one friend from childhood, and one MIT friend from Spain (so he was particularly invested in the game – that was fun!).
After getting home, we continued what became our almost nightly ritual of tea and toast or wine and snacks with Richard (often Carol or Claire joined us too). Tonight we had tea and toast with Richard and while we didn’t have as eventful a day as yesterday, we analyzed the day’s games and Richard told us about South Africa and what the world event of the World Cup coming to South Africa really meant to him. Over all our late evening conversations, we feel like they gave us special experience of South Africa and we really came to cherish our time with Richard and Carol. We look forward to the day our paths cross again.
Kirstenbosch Gardens:
Josh really liked this sculpture – we saw it again later out near Stellenbosch College. I think it is called Cheetah and Springbok or something like that.
Pretty flowers:
Guinea fowl:
Jeannette on the boardwalk that went through a more natural growth area, in swampy marshy spot:
Calla Lily! One of our wedding flowers! (This is exactly 1 week before our 5 year anniversary!)
They has a lot of sculptures and nicely manicured gardens (though there were less manicured spaces as well):
This was a temporary building and exhibit:
The living walls:
The original avenue lined with Camphor trees that Cecil Rhodes planted:
A restful spot:
There were gorgeous flowers everywhere:
The weather was a little overcast in spots as we waited for the sun to come over the Mountain. But the gray mist only made the garden’s colors stand out even more.
