Friday, April 9, 2010

1kg mussels, wine and burgers...

Being on a holiday schedule and eating breakfast around 11am (around the same time as the second Navy tea bell in Simon’s town), we find ourselves at Bertha’s catching the tail end of what appears to be some heavy lunch time drinking sessions and dinner time for pensioners and tourists.  
That didn’t deter us, and we grazed down a 1kg of mussels, burgers and a bottle of wine for dinner.  How I love holidays!













Thur 8 April – sugar and spice and all things nice




Today we increased our Cape Town visitor count by one, up to a total of five (or theoretically up to a total of eight, if I was counting children, which I’m not) by hooking up with Gail and her cutey-pie daughter, Josie, and engineering son, Liam.












Ryan entertained himself by building a Theo Jansen leg of Strandbeest, which are part of his plans to take over the world and Liam helped by building a clock with moving hands.  Ryan did have bigger plans for Liam, but these disappeared when Liam’s response of ‘I don’t know what that is’ was not a joke to Ryan’s insistence on precision cutting!  Liam is only 4 of course, and his cuteness makes up for his lack of scissor skills :)














Spot the problem?


There is also the small issue of the tree outside Fish Hoek Primary school – has anyone noticed how skew it is?  I reckon it’s going to fall soon, perhaps somebody should notify the council?


Wed 7 April - The Steak out...and hump night



Looking back at this day, there wasn’t much to it except eating, well for most of us anyways, except Jolene who didn’t actually get her dinner from The Ambassador, in Fish Hoek. 

I can proudly say that both Ryan and I managed to get our lazy asses out of bed and down the road for a run and of course the amount of procrastination that this took meant that it was soon time for lunch.  We headed down into Simon's town and after looking into the property market, landed up sitting on the white railed balcony of The Meeting place for lunch where we enjoyed great service, delicious Tuna on Wasabi mash potatoes and Steak and chips, a glass of wine, an Appletiser and a coffee for R250 (AUD$40).  
That was fun, but not the highlight of the lunch.....as we had parked in a 1 hour spot we had a good eye on the road below checking out for approaching traffic wardens.  Then suddenly the 'Ingrid' license plated MX5 drives past.  In the car is my mother and father, who suspiciously decided not to actually park in the available parking lot in the Bertha's parking lot, but to turn the car around and to immediately exit.  
As you can see from the photo taken from our sitting place in the restaurant you can clearly see the drive way from our sitting place and we couldn’t decide if they were looking straight at us too?  
We felt like Mma Romatswe from the no.1 Ladies detective agency, playing sleuth games while eating our lunch! (the rest of this story is to be continued by word of mouth....)






To celebrate Hump night (Wednesday night), and to compensate not attending yoga (which was the girls original plan), Jolene&Marco, Gail&Iain and we went to Fish Hoek’s very own Portuguese restaurant. 

It all started very well, but as the place got busier our food and service became more and more slack until it ended with a missing meal and empty drinking glasses.  A replacement meal was attempted, but Jolene had successfully substituted the food with booze by the time the oil sodden, droopy calamari and wilted salad arrived and the manager kindly removed the cost of the calamari from the bill along with a 10% discount, which was a nice gesture.  
We finished off at Gail&Iain’s were Jolene got her favourite dinner of Provita’s and cheese! J






Thursday, April 8, 2010

Tues 6 April - The eye appointment

Went for an eye check up to consider re-lazering my eyes, but after getting the results of the seemingly simple eye test back, I decided against it.  However, we did get to participate in a massive fight with Dr Hill's Surgery when they suddenly sprung a R700 fee on what I believed to be a 'free assessment'.  Anyway, the lady with way too much blue eye shadow and the blue skull cap really had a right go at us, screaming and performing like a five year old brat (which I have to say does seems to be the South African way of communicating) and we landed up walking out without paying.  I'm not saying we didn't fuel the situation ourselves by screaming back, and having a somewhat lingering hangover did not help dissolve the situation.

I don't know if we've been out of South Africa too long (long enough to learn manners), or if we're just not hard enough to survive in the jungles of Cape Town, but I do think Capetonians have too much attitude!  Yes Capetonians, you heard me right....what you gonna do about it hey?  hey?  Ah, I'm sorry, don't be mad with me ;)
Okay but seriously bru - they speak to each other (and more importantly us) with very little respect and everything has a  flavour of attitude.  A big chip on their shoulder!  Well get over it!  This is Africa after all.

On an up side, and friends without attitude, we met up with Jolene and Joy for lunch at The Forrester's Arms.  Sadly the chicken pie, that I had my heart set on, was not available.  Don't you hate it when you mentally commit to a meal and when you order the waiter is all like 'oh, sorry, that was the other meal not available!'  grrr.  Especially if any of you have been out with me and have noticed how long it takes for me to decide.  Eating is a serious business, there are only so many meals we have in one life time, so you need to make them all count ;)

(no photos, sorry)

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Mon 5th April - BBQ with folks

Sober, yay! shopping, washing, cleaning, and getting ready for the braai.

Enjoyed a very impressive breakies, produced by Marco and jo (go team Bertoldi).  Eggs by jolene, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, fried onions by marco.....tea....yum, made my poor avo on toast yesterday look a bit pathetic! (here is a picture of Ryan enjoying his uber-breakies)

We picked up some great rump Espetada's from Pick'nPay, made 2 stunning salads and started the fire.  Gail and Iain came over and we had a great evening chilling at the Simon's town apartment, taking in the view and enjoying a few drinks.

Watched the sub go out and be towed back in?  Good entertainment all round.




Some more beautiful views during rough seas.

Sun 4th April - sobering up...

Sobering up, drinking again....

Got Vis and chips and burgers for dinner!  I think we watched 6 movies!

Bed...

Sat 3rd April - I did it: 21km!!! :)

4.45am, woke up, showered, picked up Jolene and Marco and headed off to Newlands to join the other thousands determined to run the Two Oceans Half Marathon.

6am - we were off!

7km, rounding into constantia, I met up with Gail and Iain, and felt like giving up!  But powered on....

15km, got into my wind and raced up the biggest hill I have ever seen!  

21km, and finished at approximately 2h15 minutes.  Ryan managed to get some great shots too and I saw Ryan, Jo and Marco in the stands leading up to the finish posts.

YAY!!!!

Picked up some devine breakies in Cape Town and then headed home to start the 2 day drinking episode....











Tuesday, April 6, 2010

2 April - Friday


Ryan and I found a secret beach, within working distance from our beautiful apartment and spent the afternoon sunning and swimming with the penguins and star fish.   It was great.
As a small warm up and to the big race tomorrow and the fact that we were ditching the 5km international friendship race, we went for a small run in Simon’s town.   I think tomorrow’s going to be hard!

No booze and off to bed early, how good are we?

Monday, April 5, 2010

Thursday - 1 April - Moving in



Lots to do.....packed up and headed towards Cape Town.  Stopped into the Two Ocean Marathon expo to register and picked up my number (and have suffered from stomach flutters since!).  Went onto the Waterfront to get Ryan some shoes and had Vis and Chips and lunch.  So, I have to say that this was the first signs of preferring Australia, I remember when we visited Cape Town from the UK and I was always amazed by the food selection and taste, but I think I would prefer my Sydney grilled barramundi, grilled Sword fish or grilled Tasmanian Salmon to the deep fried choices here.  The hakes okay, but not the tastiest of fishes - and the fillet did come with bones, but of course South Africa is a saucy country, so there is peri-peri mayonnaise, garlic mayonnaise, tartar sauce, tomato sauce, vinegar and thousand island sauce, all available on the table, and for FREE, which you don’t get in Sydney.  So it is yummy, but also very fattening.

We then drove through Camps bay and over Chapmans peak to get back to Fish Hoek.  It must be one of the greatest scenic routes in the world and still lives up to every ever lastening memory I have of Cape Town.  Its times like this when I wish we could teleport some of our friends over to show them around.

I was amazed by the growth of the Nelson Mandela informal (well now pretty formal i would imagine) settlement in Hout Bay.  Not only does it extend down to the main road, but also way higher than the house line.  Some of those shacks must have awesome views!

Okay, so now we’re on about 2.30pm and we specifically told the agent that we would meet-and-greet at 4pm.  This women (the agent) is such a pain, a typical estate agent, full of attitude and just a real Bag (I’m trying not to say bitch on my blog!).  So after refusing to phone her 30 minutes before we get there (as we knew we were going to be there at 4pm), we could not be late.   We managed to pick up the bags, get the shopping and get there by 3.45pm, and as we get out a few very harrowing things happen....of course she’s not there, but once phoning her we realize she’s very late, but thats not it....there is a baby SCREAMING its head off in the place next door.  And I’m not talking ‘I want my bottle’ scream, I’m talking ‘I have tonsillitis’ scream, or ‘my teeth are coming out’ scream.  Shit balls!  My ideal serene month away, is ruined by a baby! :(

Okay, really there isn’t much suspense here, we went for a drink, the agent finally pitched up and by the time we got back the baby was quiet (or gone)?  But after not really seeing Ryan for more than 2 days at a time since January and not having a private moment with him at all since 3 weeks ago, being severely jet lagged and having to deal is middle aged bag agent, I was about ready to forgo the trip and fly back home!

As it turns out the place is stunning, the views are endless, the fridge is cold, the weather is hot and there is no one else in the house but Ryan and me:)  YAY.....i have attached a whole bunch of photos to make everyone jealous!

1 bottle of wine, 3 loads of washing, lots of unpacking, a chicken salad and we’re off to bed.

Lekke bly!

Damn jet lag, 3.45am!  Good morning