Day 2 - The Grand Tour

Day 2 -

Day two was the day I left completely open. The ships strategic location right in the middle of everything is very conducive to this because all of the students end up sleeping on the ship instead of roaming throughout the country.  I grabbed a group of all-star traveling buddies and we started the morning by heading to the Malay quarter for breakfast.

In case you haven't seen it, the Malay quarter is truly unique and a feast for the eyes. On some streets, every single building is painted a different incredibly bright color. We stopped and got brunch at a very European art boutique/coffee shop called "Haas" where I had a mocha cappuccino  and chicken & mushroom bake to eat, it was a good thing. We continued roaming, stumbled on a weekend market that sold all kinds of food and crafts  then headed back to the ship to meet with a  car we had hired earlier in the day.

The car was set to take us around the cape to see some of the city's more popular destinations. Cape Town truly has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to scenery, and we did our best to see them all in one day. I'll make the disclaimer now that this day is going to be difficult to convey through words, I think the pictures will do a much better job later. First stop: Camp's Bay which is a popular tourist beach lined with ocean front restaurants and bars. We continued on through some mountains, along the coast and made our way into the alcove known as Hout bay, a particularly striking area of the coastline. We then cut eastward across the cape to Simons Town Beach. What's so special about Simons Town Beach you may ask? Penguins line the coastline, sunning, nuzzling, waddling, napping and whatever other things penguins do. Then it was on to the main attraction; Cape Point, one of the southern most points on the entire African continent, which lies roughly at the border of the Indian and Atlantic Ocean. It was by far the coolest stop on the trip because of the fact that it was  where I ran into gator nation!  Walking back from the peak of Cape Point a lady walking the opposite way yelled "Go Gators! We have  a big game coming up today (Kentucky)".  We then visited the Cape of Good Hope before making our way back to town for dinner and sleep. Again sorry about the laundry list of activities, the pictures should make up for it!