Day 5 - Cape Town

Today was a bit of a crap shoot weather wise. The clouds over table mountain started to clear up, but the wind was too strong for the cable car to run up the mountain.  Instead we went up to Signal Hill. , where I went to want the sunset that didn't really happen the other night. On e up there I could totally see why the cable car wasn't running because I almost blew away a few times from the wind, it was that strong!  It was nice to be up there on a sunny day and we had some spectacular views of the city and the mountains. On our way back down the mountain we stopped so our guide could show us the national flower, the protea, which is just now starting to bloom (it just turned spring here, remember). We got out of the bus and it was higher up an embankment and I was the only daring one to climb up it to get a decent photo of it. 

Afterwards we stopped and walked thru the streets of Bo Kaap, a Cape Malay neighborhood, with brightly painted homes. It reminded many of us of La Boca in Argentina.  We then drove around town some more, past some of the sites I had seen previously and then walked thru the company gardens. 

We then tried again to go up cable mountain but the car was still closed. Instead we had free time to walk around town.  We went and checked out some of the craft markets as well as a store that a friend suggested I seek out - carol boyes. Her stuff was amazing but I refrained since her stuff would be too heavy in my bag this early in the trip. She's got stores all over joburg so I'll check it out before I leave. 

Tonight was Friday night and being on a trip with Jewish singles, they like to do some kind of a Friday night service. However, since there's a beautiful synagogue in town, we went there. I normally do t participate but I could t really get out of it without leaving the group for the entire night. It was modern orthodox shul so the women had to sit upstairs and I had no idea what was going on bc it was all in Hebrew. Still, it was a beautiful shul. 

Afterwards we had an amazing (and long) dinner at Aubergine. Sooooo good!