Great South African Road Trip: Cape Winelands

Spent the last few days staying in the wine country. Most people who come out here stay in Stellenbosch, and everyone says you have to go to Stellenbosch when you are in SA. Just so that I could be a little different, I decided to stay in a smaller town, Franschhoek, a little ways away.

From Cape Winelands

I think it was a really good decision. The town is very nice, friendly, and with lots of restaurants. They say the scenery is supposed to be great too, but I can't really say for sure because the clouds haven't lifted enough for me to see it.

From here I drove around to Stellenbosch and Paarl (another nice, town). The one place I have to say I didn't like was Stellenbosch. So far, it is the only place in SA where people on the street have come up and bothered me for money. So the place left me with a bit of a negative vibe. The historic center is nice, and there seem to be a lot of cool restaurants, so I can see how people would like it. Maybe just bad luck on my part, but my suggestion is to stay outside Stellenbosch and drive into town to eat. Paarl was a nice feeling town too. I even stopped and did a little wine tastting.

From Cape Winelands

I wanted to go walk up along these big rock outcroppings they have. Turns out it was a long dirt road to get to them. By the time I arrived, I was in a cloud. I decided to wait to see if it cleared, instead it started raining hard. So, I turned around and headed back without ever really getting a good view of anything. That's pretty much been the story of the wine country for me.

The next day, I drove south to the coast in search of better weather, and found it. I went to Cape L'Agulhas, the southermost point in Africa. Everyone thinks it is the Cape of Good Hope, but if you look on the map closely, you see that it is not the southernmost point at all.

From Cape Winelands

I wasn't expecting much of the place, and it's nowhere near as dramatic as the Cape of Good Hope, but the drive down was very scenic, and the town there was nice, quiet little coastal town.

Great South African Road Trip: Cape of Good Hope

Leaving Cape Town, I worked my way down the Cape Peninsula to the Cape of Good Hope. This was complicated by South African road construction habits, which they seem to have inherited from the dutch. This means that even though there may only be one road along the coast, they don't think twice about closing it for a month. No alternating flows here. Still, I managed to see a few interesting things along the way.

From Cape Peninsula

The Cape of Good Hope itself

From Cape Peninsula

is a really beautiful place. I am glad the sun was out for this. Rocks and bush up against a deep blue ocean is pretty impressive.

From Cape Peninsula

From Cape Peninsula

It's also exciting to be standing in a place that feels like for all intents and purposes the edge of the world. No more land until you reach Antarctica.

In fact, they even have penguins

From Cape Peninsula

Next up is the wine country.

Great South African Road Trip: Cape Town

Day 1 was just arriving into Cape Town. The weather was terrible and I got soaked just loading the luggage into the rental car. Aside from the slums and driving on the other side of the road, South Africa seems a lot like the US so far. The slums take a little getting used to (and there's no avoiding them, they are right next to the airport), but it seems a little surreal whizzing past them a few feet away on the highway. The hotel was in the waterfront area. It is a really pleasant, lively area of stores, hotels and restaurants around the old harbor that is now mostly disued. It makes for a nice place to walk around. Stopped by the aquarium also; it was decent, but had no conveyor belt to move you around like Singapore. It did have several no fishing signs posted about, so clearly this must have been a problem at some point. Day 2 was a busy day of siteseeing including the castle

From Cape Town

and center of the city.

From Cape Town

Unfortunately, it was a Sunday, and the city was pretty much dead. The nice gardens in the center of the city containing all the government buildings and several museums was very nice, particularly the national gallery.

From Cape Town

After that, I went to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was really nicely surprised by it. The gardens were massive, emaculately maintained, and had miles of lawns, paths, and trails to explore. I spent a few hours just wandering around and admiring the place. It would be a great place to go for a picnic. These were probably the best gardens I have been to, and possibly my favorite thing in Cape Town.

From Cape Town

Last stop for day two was the top of Signal Hill for a view of the city. The sun finally came out for a little while for this.

From Cape Town

The next day was spent almost exclusively doing Robbeneiland and Table Mountain.

Robbeneiland is a bit like Alcatraz.

From Cape Town

It is the prison island where Nelson Mandela and many other political prisoners were held. After you take the boat out to the island, you get a tour around to the different parts of the island by a former prisoner, and then another former prisoner takes you through the prison itself and explains what life was like. The prison itself was not very exciting to see (they never are), but the stories from the guides were very entertaining and absolutely enlightening. It was well worth going to see, and also one of my favorite stops in Cape Town.

From Cape Town

After that, it was off to Table Mountain to take the cable car up to the top (didn't have enough time to hike it). Fortunately, there was a break in the clouds while I was there and so I could walk and take pictures in the sunshine.

From Cape Town

The cable car rotates as it goes along, which is cool, but I can see that being really bad for people who get motion sick. Thee view from the top was, of course, very nice. The only bad thing about it is the location. There isn't really decent parking at the cable car station, everyone just parks along the side of road, which makes for a lot of congestion. Instead of having the station halfway up the mountain, they should have made it longer and start from the edge of town.

Next up is the Cape Peninsula and the Cape of Good Hope itself.

Keukenhof Again

Well, it is that time of year again, when sun starts to come back out and the rain stops for a little. That means it's time to go to Keukenhof and see the tulips. This year was probably the best conditions of any of the times I have been. Things were definitely at or near the peak of the peak. Despite the good conditions, I tried to be too creative in my pictures and so they did not come out all that great. Still, it is a tradition to go here every year, and there are plenty of nice pictures in the prior years. And now what you've been waiting for, pretty flowers.

From Keukenhof 09

Does anyone else find this one a little bit scary?

From Keukenhof 09

Easter in Tuscany: Last Day

For the last day of the trip, I decided to go without a real plan and instead drive through the countryside in whichever direction looked interesting and avoid the main roads until it was time to head for the airport. This was well worthwhile and very relaxing.

One of the nicer places I stopped was Castiglion Fiorentino. It was one of the places that had been on my list, but I had dropped it because I didn't think it ranked highly enough. It is a compact and well preserved hilltown with lots of narrow streets and hardly any tourists. It was a nice place to stop for a while.

From Tuscany

The other major stop was Cortona, but I found it less attractive and full of tourists. But, it is the countryside that is best.

From Tuscany

Easter in Tuscany: San Gimignano and Siena

Next up were the cities of San Gimignano and Siena. Despite both being filled with tourists, somehow San Gimignano managed to feel less touristy than Siena, which surprised me. San Gimignano is famous for its towers, several of the houses or buildings have tall towers.

From San Gimignano

with a nice view from the top.

From San Gimignano

The frescoes in the church were an unexpected surprise for me. They were some of the most extensive and best preserved I have seen, and are definitely worth some time.

From there, it was off to Siena. Siena proved to be a bit tricky. As I drove in, the sign leading to the parking areas said all the parking lots were full. I hoped for good luck and went to one. After circling around, I gave up and tried another side of the city. After an hour or so, I managed to get a place to park. The consequence of that was that I no longer had time to do any of the museums in Siena, and had to content myself with just walking around.

The city is by no means flat. In fact, you could use a topograhical map as you walk around. If you take the right streets, getting from place to place can be fairly level. Take the wrong streets and you might have a steep hill to deal with. Of course, I saw the Piazza del Campo

From Siena

and the view from the top of the tower.

From Siena

Easter in Tuscany: Maranello and San Marino

Strictly speaking, neither of these two places are in Tuscany, but I can't change the name of the series just for one day.

The main purpose of this day was to drive to Maranello, drive past the Ferrari factory and go to the Ferrari museum. The museum was not nearly as large as the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart, but neither is Ferrari as big nor been around as long. For the automotive minded, though, it is a big deal, and one of the reasons to go to Italy.

There were plenty of nice cars on display (mostly race cars), and unlike many museums they were not roped off and you could walk around and get as close as you liked.

From Galleria Ferrari

From Galleria Ferrari

Unfortunately, the museum has followed the modern trend in musuems of "artistic lighting". In this case, it was in the form of deep skylights. The result, though, was a big enough contrast of light and dark between parts of the room and the cars to make taking decent pictures nearly impossible.

The rest of the day was spent driving to San Marino, mostly so I could say I have been to San Marino. There isn't much I can say about San Marino; it is at the top of a steep hill, and it was so crowded I was forced to park a long way from the center and didn't feel the need to make the effort to get to the center.

That was a good thing, though, because it meant I could stumble across San Leo on the way back to the hotel.

From Tuscany

I saw a castle on a hill in the distance and drove towards it. Up a one lane road, through a city wall, down the middle of a street market, and finally to a parking lot right in the middle. It was a really quaint little village with a castle on the hill above it. It had excellent gelato and nice views of the surrounding countryside. Definitely recommended.

Easter in Tuscany: Pisa

After Florence, the next stop was Pisa. This turned into the day when nothing went right. First, I stopped in the morning at a small, little town that seemed deserted. However, the one inhabitant was the guy who writes the parking tickets. I thought the sign said parking was free, I guess my italian isn't perfect. When I arrived in Pisa, there was a group of guys hanging around the parking lot offering to make sure nothing bad happened to my car in exchange for 5eur. Don't you just love a little protection racket in the morning? After I left Pisa, I got a phone call from the hotel (I was switching hotels that day) saying that they had a problem and had no electricity or water and if I would mind switching to another hotel they suggested. Since it was afternoon and I was in the car, I didn't have much choice but to say yes. When I got there, I found there was a carnival going on nextdoor. Fortunately, the hotel turned out to be ok, but that was about the limit of good things that happened that day.

In Pisa, naturally I saw the cathedral and the Torre Pendente, or leaning tower as we call it.

From Pisa

The walk to the top was not as difficult as I thought it would be. The marble was a little slick, though, so I could imagine it not being much fun in the rain. And, of course, the view from the top.

From Pisa

Easter in Tuscany: Florence

This year for Easter, I decided to go to Tuscany. First up was Florence, home of the ponte vecchio.

From Florence

It is a nice city, and very compact to walk around. On the downside, I didn't think its gelato was particularly special. I got to see alot of museums including the Uffizi. Naturally, I saw the statue of David, but was not overly impressed with it. I thought his hands were unnaturally large.

The churches in Florence are also really good, particularly the frescoes.

From Florence

The best, though, was the battistero, which was so much more elaborate than I had expected. It took a long time to take it all in.

From Florence

Cherry Blossoms

I managed to be in DC this year in time for the peak of the cherry blossoms, so I went into the city with a friend to take pictures of them. The last time I went to see the cherry blossoms, I managed to get a lot of nice pictures. This time, however, I am not too impressed by the pictures. I blame it on the fact that it was very, very windy. Waves were splashing over the walls of the tidal basin. It is hard to take a picture of a blossom that is moving around. But, there were some nice effects.

From Cherry Blossoms

The remaining good pictures were few and far between

From Cherry Blossoms

but the weather (aside from the wind) was very pleasant and it made for a really nice way way to spend half a day.

The best part however, was Tree Cat. Behold, Tree Cat.

From Cherry Blossoms