Today was another great day. We walked
down from Signal Hill, getting a beautiful view of the city and the harbor. A
lady named Jane gave us some insightful history along our walk. We went down to
where they shoot a canon at exactly noon, which is a tradition for when the
sailors needed to set their watches back in the day. Then we walked down into
the city.
The first place we went to was
Bo-Kaap, a unique neighborhood where all the houses are painted in vivid,
bright colors. This neighborhood is special because it is the only South
African black residential area that survived in Cape Town during apartheid. All
other South African black residents in the city were forced to move out.
Nowadays, Bo-Kaap is facing gentrification as wealthier people, in particular
film production people (as a lot of movies are filmed in Cape Town), rent out
or move into these houses.
We continued walking further into
the city, past Long Street where a lot of bars and clubs exist, and into West
Market, a vibrant little center lined with cafes where lots of crafts are sold.
Then we walked along the pathway by Citizen's Garden; gorgeous trees lined the
path with lots of museums as well as the political center. There is even a Holocaust
museum, because during the Holocaust, a lot of Jews fled to South Africa. At
one point, Cape Town had the second highest population of Jewish people in the
world.
This evening, Mike Meadows (professor at UCT and a program leader) took the whole group to one of the fanciest places I have ever been, De Grendel Wine Estate and Restaurant. I had a mussel appetizer, salmon, some sort of white fish main dish, and a lavish chocolate dessert.
