Cape Town - February 21, 2014

The Victoria and Albert Waterfront is just a few blocks from our door step. It is a huge, beautiful and rather new shopping, dining, drinking, hotel and entertainment complex set just to the north of the Cape Town Stadium and just west of the busy international shipping and commercial fishing basin on Table Bay.

We arrived there about 10:30 am hoping to catch the boat to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was held prisoner for 27 years. Were we ever surprised to learn that the first available tickets are next Tuesday morning. In spite of the best of planning, it never fails that sometimes things just don't work out. Not to worry, I took photos in the museum and we changed plans. Instead of shopping on Monday, we shopped the V&A today. We had our breakfast on the steps of the museum and waited around a while longer until noon so that we could see and hear the cannons that fire precisely at noon every day except Sunday to alert ships to synch their time. I caught the actual firing in a photo. The smoke can be seen a second or two before the blast can be heard. At our apartment, the canons are so close by, windows shake with the blast!

If we lived here, I think we'd visit the V&A often. The shops are unique and fun. If a shopping mall is more your liking, it has that too. But I think the best is the view, the air, the wharf, the festive atmosphere and the inviting restaurants. There are many of them. We plan to have seafood on the V&A tomorrow or Sunday night and listen to one of the many outdoor musical groups.

We dropped off our purchases at the apartment and boarded a bus toward the Gardens bus stop. We had been told it was the entrance to the botanical gardens. Nope! Cute neighborhood and interesting bus ride through several ordinary and then upscale neighborhoods. To reiterate, sometimes things just don't work out. But hey, we were hot, tired afterwards and quite ready to relax in our lovely, cool, air conditioned little flat.

Tomorrow we will pick up our rental car and follow the eastern coast line along False Bay to Smitswinkel Bay where our road will take us inland a bit toward Cape Point near Cape of Good Hope.

Humor me a few more musings about Africa . . . All people here, decedents of English, Dutch or German settlers or those with indigenous roots speak English, proper English. Yes, there are some varying accents, but their use of the English language is well done. Grammar is perfect, there is no slang, no slurring of words and certainly no swagger. I am amazed and I wish we at home would do better with our speech.

Ok, yes there are beggars here, especially so in Cape Town. We saw beggars nowhere else in Africa. I guess that comes with the territory in a big city filled with tourists.

Apartheid ended in 1994. In my way of thinking that was a very, very recent event. One would think that generations of time would be required to change culture and prior divisions, or maybe it was just that only the government and a few people wanted apartheid. Maybe the collective people wanted something else. What I see here today is a true sense of congeniality and acceptance among all people, black, white, whatever. It is wonderful! As just one example, today on a crowded bus, I saw a sturdy, rambunctious fair-haired, fair-skinned little boy take the hand of a little black toddler to lead her onto the bus safely through the crowd and ahead of her grandmother. Also in our time here we have asked so many people, black or white, directions or information on a subject of some sort, and each person responded with a smile and in the kindest, most respectful, helpful manner I have ever witnessed. This too, is something I will try to work toward in my life back home. After all, we are alike. Every single one of us is merely flesh, blood, mind and soul, all made the same. I love you all.