South African postcard 2
We’re in a cozy B+B called St. James, on Bree Street in the City Bowl. It is a gorgeous, antique place, whose furniture and pace of life seem pleasantly stuck in the 1880s. We arrived here yesterday, in a driving rain, and stashed our car in their parking lot, which is of course protected by a chain link fence with razor wire on the top, just as our hotel has a locked gate, a locked door, and a big panic button the receptionist can use to summon the armed security guards. After a while, this intense security against nameless and faceless violent thieves begins to seem normal, although it does shape how you live your life. We tend to get back to the hotel before 9pm, just to be safe.
Anyway, after our arrival we took a little stroll around the City Bowl, being particularly impressed with the Company’s Gardens and their stately fig trees, trunks as massive as an elephant’s leg. Seeing the location of the former slave market in Cape Town, as well as the balcony where Nelson Mandela gave his famous speech, brought the tragic history of the place home.
Our visit this morning to the District 6 museum deepened our understanding. The story of the integrated neighborhood torn down on the insistence of the white government literally brought tears to my eyes, particularly the old street signs. I was intellectually interested in the fact that the architects who planned the demolition justified the intervention using Le Corbusier’s writings, further strengthening my conviction that nothing good came out of that man’s ideas. After the museum, we walked through the Garden District and then up to the Bo-Kap for a Cape Malay Brunch (we heard the Noon Gun fire), then wandered around the Waterkant and then the Waterfront. Much fun, and way too much eating.
Anyway, after our arrival we took a little stroll around the City Bowl, being particularly impressed with the Company’s Gardens and their stately fig trees, trunks as massive as an elephant’s leg. Seeing the location of the former slave market in Cape Town, as well as the balcony where Nelson Mandela gave his famous speech, brought the tragic history of the place home.
Our visit this morning to the District 6 museum deepened our understanding. The story of the integrated neighborhood torn down on the insistence of the white government literally brought tears to my eyes, particularly the old street signs. I was intellectually interested in the fact that the architects who planned the demolition justified the intervention using Le Corbusier’s writings, further strengthening my conviction that nothing good came out of that man’s ideas. After the museum, we walked through the Garden District and then up to the Bo-Kap for a Cape Malay Brunch (we heard the Noon Gun fire), then wandered around the Waterkant and then the Waterfront. Much fun, and way too much eating.
