Part 2: Fireworks, Fizz and a Big Red Bus

We’re only staying in Cape Town for a few days so today is all about sightseeing in the most practical way possible – on an open top bus tour. However, crawling at a snail’s pace up the hill towards Table Mountain breathing in traffic fumes whilst baking in the African sun isn’t quite what we were expecting, but it is peak tourist season, being New Year’s Eve.

We’re all going on a summer holiday…

We’re all going on a summer holiday…

Thankfully we’re well rested after a ten-hour sleep and are covered head to toe in factor 50, sporting wide-brimmed safari hats like a pair of muppets, so are as prepared as can be. We’ve boarded at the Aquarium, right next to our hotel and been driven downtown, through Long Street and past the colourful Bo Kaap Muslim quarter stretching up the hill.

Once past all the traffic crawling towards Table Mountain we stop at the cable car station where people disembark. With Coman’s aversion to heights, and cable cars in particular, we’re not heading to the summit. Having already ascended thirteen years ago I’m keen to see other parts of the city too and we’re soon driving down the far side, past the Twelve Apostles rocky outcrops to beautiful Camps Bay.

Driving through Cape Town

Driving through Cape Town

We cruise along the sea front and then drive up through Clifton with its beautiful beaches and stunning houses, along Victoria Road towards Bantry Bay. The breeze whips across us from the ocean as we journey through Seapoint with trees grown into bent shapes showing the continual force of the wind, and from Greenpoint we can see Robben Island, 10kms out to sea.

We stay on the bus a couple of extra stops to bring us round to Long Street again where we swap to the yellow downtown route. A relatively short affair it takes us past St George’s Cathedral, the Parliament and through District Six, scene of notorious land clearances during the apartheid regime, to the Castle of Good Hope and along Adderley Street.

Streets of Cape Town

Streets of Cape Town

Departing the bus back at Long Street once more we stroll through the central shopping district. Long Street is full of pretty, colonial buildings with balconies reminiscent of New Orleans, whilst St George’s Mall is a pedestrianised thoroughfare with souvenir stands and cafes lining its length. We spend time checking out the paintings, masks, textiles and trinkets in Greenmarket Square, a grand plaza crammed full of market stalls and hawkers, but are so overwhelmed by choice we choose not to buy anything and head on our way in search of lunch.

Our wandering leads us to Company’s Garden, the landscaped park running past some of the grandest buildings in the centre of the city including both the South African National Gallery and National Museum. Entrance fees are less than £2 a head and they are full of incredible exhibitions which we lose ourselves in, thankful partly for the cool of air conditioning.

Driving down to Camps Bay

Driving down to Camps Bay

We break for a late lunch in the alfresco restaurant in the Gardens and then, once we’ve had our fill of the vast anthropological displays in the National Museum, pop across the road for a cocktail at the famous Mount Nelson Hotel. Often referred to as either the Pink Lady (due to being painted the same colour as the Beverly Hills Hotel) or just the Nellie by locals, it’s the haunt of film stars and politicians, and renowned for its afternoon tea; voted the best in the world recently by the Sunday Times.

I’d had dinner here on my previous visit, but like a lot of Cape Town, my memory of it is hazy and a lot has changed – partly no doubt because it was night time then but still blazingly sunny now. We wander in through the gardens, past fountains and the pool and find a seat on the terrace of the Planet Bar, ordering Amalfi Gimlet and Guava Rita cocktails. Around us birds are twittering but the tranquility is rather ruined by a loud and sozzled local family at the table next to us, braying with privilege and suggesting that outdated prejudice and backward views are alive and well in parts of white South Africa.

At the Mount Nelson Hotel

At the Mount Nelson Hotel

Being New Years Eve, dinner reservations are at a premium but after a bit of searching I’d managed to secure us an early table at the fabulous Kloof Street House Restaurant, which had been recommended to us back in London a few weeks ago, and is handily situated just ten minutes’ walk from the Mount Nelson. An old Victorian mansion, which has variously been a hospital, a children’s home and a brothel amongst other incarnations, it’s been renovated and gloriously decorated in an eclectic manner featuring high ceilings, opulent furniture, fabulous decor, feathers, chandeliers and lampshades. We feel right at home!

A bottle of local Krone Cuvee starts us off with very affordable bubbles and our starter of buratta with grilled artichoke, avocado, tomatoes, pine nuts and a balsamic dressing is absolutely delicious. While we eat, a lady dressed in an illuminated white dress silently hands out fortunes for the year ahead – mine reading “The new year is the new you”, which might give me a kick on the way to becoming a teetotal vegan, and Coman’s appropriately is, “Singing is like painting with words and sounds”.

The main course of gnocchi with asparagus, grilled spring onion, courgette and a napolitana and Parmesan sauce falls a little short of the starter’s high standard but desserts of chocolate, gingered crème fraiche, hazelnut praline and gold leaf, and a lemon meringue tart with white chocolate, coconut, pistachio and raspberries round us off nicely, as do a couple of further cocktails. Not quite teetotal - or vegan - just yet!

Kloof Street House

Kloof Street House

We hop in an Uber and are back at our hotel by 8.30pm, with plenty of time to kill. It’s our third New Year’s Eve in a row on the African continent but our first in a city with a “must see” fireworks display so we freshen up and prepare for an early start tomorrow before heading down to the Admiralty Bar in the lobby of The Commodore, for a final nightcap. A few minutes before midnight we’re led out of the hotel’s back entrance to the roof of the neighbouring Springbok Rugby Museum for the perfect view of fireworks above the Waterfront.

They’re not quite on a par with Sydney, London or Paris but we raise our glasses of Stellenbosch pinotage and toast the end of 2018 with all its bizarre twists and turns, hoping the year to come is peaceful and more promising for us all.