Lauren's Last Day

Since today was Lauren’s last day in Cape Town, Miles and I wanted to let her decide everything about how her day would go. She decided to skip out on work because it was such a beautiful day, and it wasn’t predicted to be. It was predicted to be cloudy and stormy, but she was a lucky lady and it was a perfect day, so it was decided we would go and take advantage of that. We also had our car, so we all slept in for a little over half an hour, and that may sound silly, but it was amazing! Haha I felt like a brand new woman. Our first destination was the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.

It was so beautiful! I love Botanical Gardens and thought it would be nice like they usually are, but it was stunning, and it’s even winter here! The garden was huge, so we made it through most of it, but not its entirety. It was very lovely, and I’m glad we fit it into our schedule; I wanted to go but wasn’t sure if we would make it. The good thing about today is that we were hitting all of the spots on our list that we hadn’t gotten to yet, and weren’t sure if we would. We had a beach on our list called Llandudno that was supposed to be amazing that we wanted to check out, so we went (:
The beach pretty much looked like a larger version of Clifton Beach, that we went to last week. You had to take a little path down to the beach, and it was secluded and lower than the road, so not a lot of wind reached it, and it had big boulders all around it where the ocean wasn’t. It was nice, but I prefer Clifton because it’s smaller and more private. While we were here, it started to rain just a little bit, so we only took pictures and headed on our way to Hout Bay, the last place on our list that was unvisited.

There wasn’t really anything to see in the town, so we just did a quick drive through and went to find something to eat. Nando’s was still on the to-do list and there was one close by in Camps Bay. Nando’s is actually a Portuguese chain restaurant found in Europe as well as here. It is famous for its peri-peri (very hot spice) chicken and Lauren hadn’t experienced this yet. After that we drove around and found one of Cape Town’s largest malls, Canal Walk, to look around in. Lauren wanted to make sure she bought everything she wanted to before leaving. It was a pretty humongous place, comparable to Gateway mall in Durban. We even saw a Seattle Coffee Co in there! I couldn’t believe it! I had to take a picture of that one. Miles also spotted a Cinnabon, and that’s one of his favorite places, so we stopped there as well. It reminded me a bit of home.

We came back to Athlone, which is about 20 minutes outside of downtown Cape Town, and went to Vangate Mall which is across the road from where we stay to get flowers for Joan as a goodbye present. When we arrived home, Lauren finished her packing, and then later in the evening we met up with Gregg for a crazy Capetonian last night out (for Lauren, anyways).

Before meeting up with Gregg, we went back to Camps Bay to have dinner. It was nice to sit down and just talk on her last night here. Once we finished, we met up with Gregg at a club called Knoxville. It is kind of an underground club, I think. I say this because Gregg told us to meet him at Ocean Basket, which is a chain seafood restaurant here, and we were quite confused. We figured he must just be eating, but when we got there, the restaurant was pretty much empty and there was a lineup outside of the door. That was very strange, and we couldn’t figure out what was going on. We found out that the club is above Ocean Basket, but it isn’t markated anywhere. You must just have to be in the know to find this one.

Knoxville was fun, but a little too crowded for my taste. I hate always being moved around because people are trying to get by and then you always get accidentally knocked around etc. I would just rather do without. It was also a smoking club, which I hated as well. The smell of the smoke all around me made my stomach and head hurt. I was definitely ready to head to the next place. I liked it much better at the second club we went to. It was called Fez Vaudeville, and it was more central than Knoxville, which is closer to Camps Bay. Fez was very fun, and the atmosphere was quite a bit different. All of Greggs friends that had joined us at Knoxville eventually ended up at Fez with us, and they were a lot of fun as well. It was just a very enjoyable night. I think it was a good ending for Lauren.

We didn’t get home until 4:30 am though, and I was pretty much exhausted. I don’t think Miles and Lauren were as tired as I was because they had been drinking. I was just trying to keep awake on my own the whole time. The loud music was helpful, but it was still a challenge when I would have rather been crawled in my warm and comfortable bed (: When we left Fez, Miles was trying to convince Lauren (and I as the driver) to go to another club for a little bit, called the Bronx. It is a famous gay bar, so that made Miles quite interested, and Lauren had never been to a gay bar, and they are apparently supposed to be really fun. I just wanted to get home to bed, but it was eventually decided that we would drive by and see how it looked; it was Lauren’s last night and I couldn’t really say no to whatever she wanted to do. Miles had her convinced that she wanted to go if it was still a huge party inside. I was crossing my fingers that it had died down and we could just go home. Miles went inside to check for us, and it was my lucky night!! We headed back to the house, and bed hasn’t felt so good in a long time.