Ice dreams

San Marco Restaurant in Sea Point Main Road - back in the '80s - was truly amazing to me then as it was the first time I had tasted REAL pasta outside Italy. It is still going strong today, and we decided to give their Waterfront restaurant a go, despite a bad review I had read. The food was fair to good and our waitron was charming, but the ice cream is still absolutely gorgeous. I had a scoop of tiramasu and a scoop of chocolate and am still dreaming about them.

Swinging

One of the best things about hot days is that they are followed by perfect evenings. This is the Wheel of Excellence on the V&A Waterfront behind the open air amphitheatre. The band playing last night was Doc's Big Band and they did a pretty good Pata Pata for a German band!

Victoria and Alfred Waterfront

Cape Town's first safe harbour was constructed in 1860 when a breakwater was built with Queen Victoria's husband (consort to be posh), Prince Alfred, being there to ceremoniously tip the first load of stones into the sea. It was named the Alfred Basin. After a while that harbour became too small and the Victoria Basin was built. By the mid-1900s the Victoria and Alfred basins were unable to cope with large container ships and they fell into a state of disrepair after the Duncan and Sturrock Docks were built.
Then in 1988 work began on the restoring of the Waterfront, and today it is primarily a shopping, eating and entertainment venue - the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront (Pty) Ltd - although it continues as a working harbour for small vessels.
This is the restored Port Captain's Building.
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A Coca-cola-crate man named Elliot

While we are on the subject of the Waterfront, I just had to include a photo of Elliott the Coca-cola-crate man. During the World Cup he was Elliott the coca-cola crate fan. Crate man statues using discarded plastic crates seem to have originated in Australia.

Desmond Tutu

D is for Desmond Tutu, our beloved "Arch".

In 2004, Claudette Schreuders was commissioned to do four life size bronzes of South Africa's Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Albert Luthuli and F.W. de Klerk for the Waterfront in Cape Town. This is Desmond.

Does it work? There has been a lot of criticism of the four statues - as they depict four men with some gravitas yet are quite quirky. I prefer them to the usual bronze statues, and the seagulls find these guys quite difficult to perch on. More ABC Wednesday.

Lunch on Quay Four

Yesterday was Women's Day - a public holiday to commemorate the brave deeds of women in South Africa. It marks the anniversary of the march to parliament in 1956 organized by Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa, Lilian Ngoyi and Sophy Williams-De Bruyn to protest against the proposed amendments to the Urban Areas Act which would require all black people to carry a identification "pass" in urban areas to effectively keep them out unless they were officially employed by whites. 20 000 women, black and white, and indeed from all colours of our incipient rainbow nation, marched to the Houses of Parliament in Pretoria to present their petitions. Today it is a huge badge of honour to have been part of that march!
We celebrated the day with a wonderful lunch at Quay Four at the Waterfront, and were entertained by the antics of this cute little girl on the deck below us. How the women who marched over 50 years ago, many of them sadly no longer here, would appreciate such a simple scene of harmony and peace.