Cape Town Day I

Normer and I had planned to leave for South Africa on Friday morning. There were two flights heading to Africa: One from New York and the other from Atlanta. The problem was that the Atlanta flight looked a little more full and the chances of us getting First Class (or even getting on the flight) were slim. I don't know about you but when you have 2 LONG flights ahead of you, you want to be sitting in the lounge chair. We decided to head for NYC but when we arrived at the airport all of the NYC flights were either cancelled or delayed. New York was experiencing bad weather so JFK was really backed up with planes. We tried to get on several different flights but nothing was working. Everytime we would switch terminals that flight would get delayed more. Finally we gave up and decided to try the Atlanta flight. So we sat there for an hour or so with no idea if we would make it or not. It is quite stressful to fly stand-by. You never know what might happen! We really didn't think that we were going to  make it on the flight so we started to see where else we could go. I suggested perhaps Lima, Peru since there was a flight leaving there soon. We kept waiting and finally the gate agent said "Adams party of 2"!! They handed us our tickets and we ran down the jetway. As we were going down we discovered that my ticket had me in first and Normer was in coach! :) Normer and I have a long standing agreement that we will always swap turns whenever this happens. And guess who had to sit in coach last time with a kid kicking her chair the whole entire time? ME! I took my seat up front and Normer headed back. Just as I had settled into my seat, Normer came up and said that he actually didn't have a seat that his seat had been booked twice. When you fly stand-by you can't relax until they close the door. I've heard stories of people being taken back off of flights before. Eventually they get the issues worked out and I wasn't going to Africa by myself.
The flight to Dakar, Senegal lasted about 7 hours. We landed in Dakar and had to hop on a bus for a ride into the terminal. It was the middle of the night in Dakar and it was very humid there. After waiting for an hour or so we hopped back on the bus and got on a different flight headed to Cape Town. Thankfully we both got first class and even got to sit next to each other! After another 7-8 hour flight, we finally arrived and our first view of Cape Town was seeing Table Mountain as we landed. We grabbed a Taxi and then headed in to the city for our hotel. Cape Town does not have a good public transportation system and it's quite dangerous to take any of their trains. Apparently a lot of muggings happen. It was a short ride taxi ride to our hotel: the Holiday Inn Express in downtown. The hotel was true to its name and before we knew it we were in our room getting settled. After a much needed shower, we headed out for dinner.  We always have to take a picture in front of our hotel, so here it is:

We grabbed another Taxi and headed to the Waterfront. This is a very touristy area where there are tons of restaurants and boat tour docks. The views were quite spectacular there: We walked around the area and saw lots of street performers and more tourist shops than you see at Disney World. 

We finally decided on a restaurant and had a really great dinner of chicken and vegetables. The food was excellent but we were exhausted. Here I am enjoying my Coke Light. I wonder why it is called that overseas. Do non-Americans have an aversion to the word Diet in their drink?



We called it a night and headed back to our hotel after dinner. The next morning we had an early tour scheduled and needed our rest!

Up Next: Cape Town Day 2  - Peninsula & Cape of Good Hope