South Africa – Cape Town – Episode 1

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to our Journey through South Africa!
Two couples, 14 days, more than 1.800 Km in 9 stages…
Here in this first episode we are just landed in Cape Town, where we spent 3 amazing days, check out what we visited in this beautiful city.

The purpose of this channel is to share with you my trips and my travel tips, so the first will be my last trip made in December 2019.
I will post different videos showing the stages of our itinerary, follow me and stay up to date with all the new videos.

We flight from Bologna airport to Cape Town with stopover in Istanbul airport, which I found a very good option. All our trip was designed from me (itinerary, accommodation, activities) with the amazing help of Vanessa Viaggi Florence for what concerned tickets, rental car and Safari package.

In Cape Town we decided to take an apartment instead of staying in an hotel, mainly because we booked 3 nights and we wanted a common space, like a living room where to rest some time during the day and spend some time together, as we were two couple. I would say this was a very good solution, we had a beautiful apartment found in AirBnb with a reception with security guard, and a superb bar just on the ground floor where we had our breakfast every morning.

First day we explored a little bit by ourselves the center of the town, ending up to have dinner in V&A Waterfront, which I found pretty turisty but also very beautiful. That night we called an Uber to go back home ( in Cape town you can safely walk during the day but I wont suggest walking around in the night, especially if you have , like we did, backpacks, cameras, gopro and all this stuff, but Uber is very safe and efficient here ) and we actually hired the same guy for the day after to drive and escort us around.

Well this has been the best option as we could visit many places in the same day, without having to worry about traffic, GPS, parking etc. That day we started with a visit a The Silo Hotel, which is one of the best hotels in South Africa, a five star boutique hotel in the heart of the city center. We followed a visit at Boulders beach were we saw the penguins, so nice !

Our driver suggested us a nice restaurant with sea view, the Cape to Cuba restaurant, which I found pretty great. It is right by the beach and you enter from the sand which I found very similar to many places in Italy’s coast. Than after stopping for some pictures at Saint James beach, we drove to Camps Bay and the Table mountain. Going up there with the cable way was pretty scaring at first but I ensure you is super safe and arriving on the top was breathtaking. The view is 360 degrees all over Cape Town and the southern part of the cape. There are also some trekking if you have time and are brave enough to climb this mountain!

Now we were ready for our aperitivo so we went to Publik bar, one of the most well known places for natural wines in Cape Town. Super cool. The waiter suggested us a couple of places for dinner and we ended up at The Commissary, dark lights, sounds on, pretty crowded, a kind of fun dinner, but the food was just okay to be honest.

The second day we visited by ourselves the Bo-Kaap neighborhood, which is the most colorful I have ever seen. A lot of artists there and we also found out our restaurant for dinner while walking that streets and made some very nice shopping. After a very quick lunch we visited Camps Bay, that is a sort of Miami long beach of Cape Town, a long seafront with restaurants and bars but also clubs and many people around.

What we found out at this stage is that Cape Town is pretty safe city, a lot of art and culture is everywhere you walk and people are smiley and friendly. They always are keen to help tourists and you can trust most of them. They always sing and dance and have beautiful outfits that you can see while walking around the street. Art and music are the two most diffuse cultures in this part of South Africa but probably, I can say, all around the country. They have this yellow/white buses that work like a shared taxi, so you pay depending on how far you would need to get out but of course is much cheaper as you are sharing it with other people. Sometimes it gets very crowded, it can accommodate max 16 people but you can count more than 30 inside. We did not take it as it’s not suggested for tourists but we discovered than it is diffuse all over the country. Of course there are a lot of people who are in need and sometimes can make you feel unsafe to see them walking drunk in the streets in the middle of the day or just stopping you around to ask money. But those things you have in most of the metropolis worldwide and here is not much more than other places I have visited before. So don’t be afraid or scared to engage with local people, we made very nice people who helped us around during these days in Cape Town.

Also we do had a rental car but never used the first 3 days in Cape Town, but of course you absolutely need a car to move around the country, so my suggestion will be just to collect your rental car when you have to move out from the city and use Uber while staying in the town. You will save 2 or 3 days of car rental.

After spending 3 nights and 4 days in our fist stage in South Africa, Cape Town, we left for the wine lands, so stay tuned for Episode 2 to see our wine side of the trip!

Please feel free to leave a comment and like my Youtube channel here.

Published by ManuPaper

Born in Sardinia, living in Tuscany - Montalcino. Certified Italian Sommelier and WSET. Brunello addicted 😊 I am a wine enthusiast and blogger, I love to share my wine discoveries and wine reviews online, on my blog and social profiles. Travel is my second passion together with wine, that's why I enjoy visiting wine regions around the world 🌎 I have a strong experience in Hospitality and can help you in organizing your future trips in Tuscany and Italy. Wine Travel Advisor 🍷 👉🏽Social Media Content Creator and Blogger

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: