kinda cool...

Today was the best day ever!

Really!  I had a great day.  This is what happened:  I woke up early, because I have been going to sleep early and waking early,  this was pretty normal.  Then, Anna and I looked up our proposed adventure for the day, a hike up Table Mountain.  After some pretty gently research on The Google, we realized that was not actually a thing we wanted to do.  So we readjusted out plans and decided on a hike up Lions head which is another, smaller, peak that stands over Cape Town.  The issue with that plan was that it would take us a train and a couple of taxis to get to the trail head, something we had not done alone.  I personally was super apprehensive about the prospect of navigating through the Cape Town transit system guideless, but we wanted to climb the mountain, and this was the perfect day to do it.  Not only were we free all day, it was sure to be a perfectly temperatured and clear skied day.  We consulted with our program spirit guide, and stuck out on our own.
After taking the train into the heart of Cape Town, we walked for a bit and then got a cab up to the trail head where we started to hike.  It was an hour of what I would characterize as strenuous hiking, but totally worth it.  Here are the pictures:

This is the view from the parking lot

still the parking lot

a tree!

My fearless companion (with Table Mountain in the back ground)

the trail

This is what the trail looked like sometimes

SOOOOOOOOO

Pretty

At the top with my Betty jersey!

 The trail was a spiral up the edge of the mountain, so we got many views of the city from different elevations.  It was quiet a cool way to see the city layout, and a stunning hike.  After our decent, which was honestly the scariest thing i can remember taking casually, we took a cab down to the water front area, which, it turns out, is the Styling part of town, with lots of nice shops and restaurants.  We wandered around for a time before finding a bench to chill on with a view of the coming and going boats.  There were a surprising number of fishing boats from china docked in the harbor and some of their crew members were on the dock playing hackysack. kinda cool.

The water, boats, and Table Mountain!

Dragon boats! 

Statues of Tutu, Mandela and other South African leaders at the waterfront  

The bridge moving for a boat!!!!  We had perfect timing to see it! 

Boats being fixed! There were a lot of boats out of the water for maintenance they all looked large and funny out of the water.   

Dinner time!

At 6 we met up with Anna's Father who is visiting this week.  We ate at one of the restaurants on the warf. It was very good.  I had the Fisherman's Soup which was a lot like the one that Humble Beagle makes.  Very good!  After dinner we went grocery shopping (!!!) and looked through the stores at the mall.  I am learning that malls are a big deal here.  They have a lot of nice stores and restaurants and seem to attract a huge number of (mostly white) clientele.  

My cold is getting better!   Talk to you all soon!  And thank you to Maia for the hot plate recipes  If anyone else is struggling, here is the link:  HOTPLATE

Although we had to run to catch the train, and ask for directions a few times along the way, we had a flawless day.