March 14th, 2023 Day 70 of 128

Cape Town, South Africa (overnight)

Good morning from the most modern city in Africa. It was like looking out our window and seeing any major city, such as San Francisco this morning. They have public transportation, an established infrastructure, but still suffer even here from the power outages that take place multiple times a day and last 2-3 hours. Today we were originally supposed to do a daytime safari drive. We decided we had had enough Safari from our amazing visit to Kruger National Park so we cancelled our original excursion and rescheduled for an excursion called Gin and Jewels. We got up this morning and went and grabbed our usual port day breakfast at the Lido. Then, we met our excursion group at the Main Stage at 8:15am. We were an extremely small group again this morning. There was only seven of us in total. Our first stop was to the Woodstock Gin distillery in downtown Cape Town. We sampled three different gins including their awarding winning original, tangerine & ginger, and Bramble berry & Purple Lotus. We sampled them each separately and then added tonic and lime to the original, tonic and an orange slice to the tangerine one, and lastly tonic and a strawberry to the bramble berry one. They were all delicious in their own right and then even better with the accompaniments. And who can complain when you are drinking cocktail before 11:00am in the morning. Good thing we ate breakfast. It was a delightful morning and having a small group made for an intimate setting and great conversation. After Gin tasting we had some time to kill so we had about 30 minutes to go shopping in a local artisan area right next to the distillery. We got watch a man hand carving a wooden figurine. Megan I picked up a couple souvenirs. I found a beautiful silver ring with the “tree of life” on it. It reminded me of the Marula trees we saw in the bush in Kruger National Park so it will serve as a lovely piece to commemorate my trip. After shopping we boarded back on our bus and drove to Prins and Prins Diamond Merchants. This historial building, called the Huguenot House, is in downtown and can be a museum in its own right. It was built in the late 1700’s and has a rich history. The basement of this of this historical build houses a Gem Museum. We had the opportunity to learn about the gemstones, diamonds, gold and platinum that are all mined here and int he nearby surrounding areas. This jeweler specializes primarily in customer designed pieces and not mass production. They have designers and artisans on sight that are ready to help you design and create any piece you can imagine. We actually got to watch five of the artisans at work each creating a custom piece for a client. After the tour we were served a lovely snack in the courtyard of this beautiful home. We were served cheeses, crackers, fruits and champagne. Then….we were turned loose to shop!! They had a separate area where they display some estate jewelry and Megan fell in love with a lovely Jade ring in a half carved gold basket that is over 100 years old. I found lovely pair of hoop earrings. Their prices were extremely reasonable and we felt like we were treated very well and now have some special pieces mined, made and sold all in South Africa. Megan’s ting was too small to fit her so they offered to resize it for her. So we sent our excursion group back to the ship and decided to Uber back later. They took less than an hour to enlarge her ring and the best part was, we got to watch the entire process. Megan was fascinated to see how they create the piece of gold to fill the gap and then used a jewelers torch to melt small piece of golf to solder the new pieces together. It was a memorable experience for sure. When we got back to the ship we dropped off our purchases and then heading back off to catch the shuttle to the Vitoria and Alfred Waterfront Shopping center. WOW!! What a place this is. Multistoried, multiple buildings, over 80 restaurants and more shopping than you could need. We found a build a bear within a toy shop and Megan made a pink frog. We visited H&M and a Made in Africa store. We also stumbled onto a wonderful South African Cuisine restaurant called Karibu. We had a beautiful table overlooking the Marina and Table mountain. They served many local meats here and we wanted to sample as many as possible so inquired to our server how to go about doing that. He informed me there was a dish not listed not on menu called the Safari platter so we went for it. So we started our meal with a half dozen oysters and a Carpaccio combination of Crocodile, Springbok and Ostrich. Our main course consisted of cooked Springbok, Kudu, Imapala, Beef, Venison sausage, Warthog sausage, and an Ostrich filet. It was definitely reminiscent of Fogo De Chao and we were in a meat coma by the end of our meal. I had a nice glass of South African Chardonnay and it was a wonderful way to end our day here in Cape Town. We took the shuttle back to the ship and went pretty much right to bed. Since tonight is an overnight we will wake up still here in Cape Town in the morning. It also means we have an early excursion tomorrow since we don’t have to wait our the process of the ship cleaning customs. Tomorrow is our first excursion with a wonderful travel company Cruise Specialist as well. We are looking forward to seeing some of our fellow passengers and our wonderful hosts.