Day 3, Cape Town

19th February, 2011, Saturday.

Ohhh breakfast.. the most important meal of the day. The hostel recommended us to check out Cafe Sofia which was located on Kloof Street. We walked up there and knew we made the right choice, again, when our order arrived. Toast, eggs, bacon and amazing coffee, all for only R28 per person....perfect!

Did I mention 2 eggs? Okay enough with the big breakfast. To burn all that calories we packed on, we walked to the Waterkant. The one thing that didn’t work out yesterday because we got distracted by U2. Blame them!

It was a scenic walk. Cape Town is a pretty town.

Every time we looked back we’d see the Table Mountain as a backdrop. We couldn’t stop taking photos.

There it was, the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront or, for short, Waterfront. Apparently it’s a great example of how to best redevelop a declining dock area into a tourist hot spot.

- Excerpt taken from Cape Town City Guide, Lonely Planet -

Back in the days of the VOC, De Waterkant was known as the Gallows Hill. This was where slaves were executed and buried in unmarked graves. Later freed slaves settled here, as they did in the Bo Kaap (a predominantly Muslim area), but after the introduction of the Group Areas Act in the 1950s these families were forcibly removed, just like the ones in District Six and De Waterkant became a whites-only area.

And, now back to how the rest of the day went....

The atmosphere at the V&A Waterkant is always buzzing and there’s plenty to do and see. Tribal dancing, local school orchestra, postcard shopping, grab something to eat or not forgetting the infamous Robben Island.


Paul has been talking about visiting the Robben Island ever since we planned to visit Cape Town. The tickets always gets sold out, so we had to make sure we get a chance to go there. Unfortunately, as expected the tickets were sold out for the day, but there’s always tomorrow...especially when you’re still in Cape Town! This was top on our to-do list. We got our tickets for tomorrow and to celebrate we grabbed an ice cream and sat under the sun and enjoyed the rest of our day.

We walked around and enjoyed the windy sea breeze of the Waterfront .
Also watched some vessels sail into the dock while the bridge opens up to make way for them to pass through.



People watching a bit, post card shopping for a bit...you get the drift don’t you... we were enjoying the whole touristy thing.

Like all good things, we wrapped day 3 and walked back to our hostel.