Capetown Table Mountain

Few great cities have a backdrop like Table Mountain, towering a couple thousand feet above, the most distinctive part of a long, once defining ridge. Of course, the city has now grown to envelope the mountain. Still, it is a sight that no photographs can prepare you for. After the Company's Gardens, our bus took us to the cable car station and a ride to the top of the mountain. As happened on so many other occasions on our African tour, the weather broke just right.

From the Company's Gardens

Time for just one more art deco...

From the cable car station

We'll be riding in the red one

The cars are huge, accommodating 50 or more

Most interesting, as it rides up the cable, the car itself rotates,
so that everyone gets the 360 degree view

Thus

Also interestingly, if they have to rescue you, they can only
do it seven persons at a time

Us, there

Harbor area, where we'll go next

Capetown's enormous futbol stadium; rugby is their thing, I
assume

Looking down among the limestone towers

Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned

Helpful model #739

It's a long way to SF

Also DC

Looking toward the actual Cape

And south of Capetown

Capetown Company's Gardens And Environs

Our walk continued to the Company's Gardens--originally vegetable and fruit gardens in this once company town--now a public park and small botanical garden (there's a big one down the peninsula...maybe next time). At the bottom of the park is the cathedral where Desmond Tutu was bishop.

Some huge old specimens

With a gorgeous backdrop

Dirty, rotten, filthy, lice-ridden...wait,, no; Egyptian geese

I neglected to take a picture of the tree, but did get its Maori name--Pohutukawa--
which I will need to use next January

Beautiful place

More history that is not beautiful, the slave quarters

Tutu's cathedral

We LOVED this church welcome

Interior

Back into the Garden

Centre of the Book! The national library is near)

Camellia blooming right on schedule

Wifi Tree (as a companion observed)

Rhodes Monument

Cute kiddie swings in the Garden

The Gardens as they once looked

Capetown Old Downtown

After the explosive 10AM re-enactment, our tour moved on, en pied, into Capetown's older downtown and its Green Market Square.

Balcony from which Nelson Mandela spoke to the nation after
being released from his defiant years of imprisonment

We were absolutely knocked out by the amount of Art Deco
in Capetown

Just a fraction; maybe as much as SF!

We were let loose at the Green Market, a block of stalls of
crafts and tourist crap

I couldn't take my eyes of the buildings

Moving right along, Capetown's old mosque

It's astounding how many "traditional" restaurants are named
"Mama Africa"; maybe it's a chain?

Not Art Deco

You can't claim to be a city if you don't have an Irish pub

Worn but no less true

Click to enlarge and read; in this building, until 1991, judgments
were rendered about who was white, who had which rights...

These two benches remain for the their moral/dramatic effect

Our group reads and reflects