Unfortunately, I made myself a liar in my last entry because I didn't take any pictures at the closing function :( It was a lot more relaxed that I thought it would be; I expected a lot more people to be there and there would be more to do. Instead, it was a few people in the lobby and we had hotdogs and wine.. weird combination.
But now I have more interesting things to talk about, so it's a good thing I waited a few days, right? :P
Thursday we checked online to get tickets to the color run and it turns out they were all sold out. This was a huge bummer because I've been looking forward to it all semester and I've missed all the color runs at home. But, we had one more option to go to Cape Town and get tickets on Friday. So, Thursday night we booked a hotel. We really wanted a pool and to go to the beach so we had 2 options for a hotel: One on the beach that we'd have to take a taxi to, or one near the waterfront within walking distance. We picked the 2nd one, but then we found out how much walking we had to do.. Turns out the hotel was way behind the stadium and it took about an hour to walk there from the train. There was a bit of a mixup with our room but it ended up okay and the room was really nice. The view was really beautiful!! We stayed in Mouille Point, a small town between the waterfront and Camps Bay.
Unforunately we couldn't find tickets, so Friday night we ate a really nice dinner at a restaurant down the road from the hotel and then went to bed early. The next morning we woke up and looked out the window to see what else but the color run! We were next to the Yellow station so we got to watch everyone get covered in color dust.
We had breakfast at another restaurant close to the hotel and then decided we would take the city sightseeing bus just to see the other parts of town. It was really touristy but it actually ended up being really fun. The buses stop at each point every 15 minutes, and you can hop on and off wherever because your ticket lasts all day. We rode around the entire city-- through downtown, around District 6 and up to Table Mountain. My camera was dead at this point so I'll post Emmi's. The views from Table Mountain are AMAZING. The bus stops there for 15 minutes and then heads around the mountain to Camps Bay. We saw the beach at Camps Bay as we were coming down the hill and decided we'd get off for a little bit. We ended up eating at a seafood restaurant for lunch. There was a man playing the guitar outside the restaurant (it was all open to the street) and I got so excited when he started playing Country Roads.
After eating we spent some time at the beach. It was really warm so we could actually wear bathing suits. We even went into the water, but it was really really cold. We didn't have towels so we walked around on the sand and explored while we dried off. I got my first shock at a non-American beach... As we were walking around we saw a couple girls just tanning topless, meanwhile just a few feet away there were Muslim people wrapped in clothing head to toe. That was a weird experience.
We hopped back on the bus and headed for the train station. There were no more trains to Stellenbosch so we had to take the train heading for Wellington, get off at one stop and hop on the train that was going to Stellenbosch. The woman at the information booth told us we had exactly 4 minutes to do this, but when we got off the train everyone ran down the platform, behind the train, across the tracks, and up onto the next platform. The whistle blower scared us because he kept telling us to hurry, but once we got on the train, heart pounding and palms sweating from running, we realized he was messing with us. He actually came to sit with us and ended up talking to us until he got off the train. He was a little strange but really sweet.
We got off at the Stellenbosch station instead of Du Toit so I got to see an entirely different side of town. It was dark and still pretty warm so it felt like an early fall night at home. We stopped at Brazen for dinner then fell asleep as soon as we got home. It was a really beautiful and fun weekend!
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