Day 0-2 E-ville to London to Cape Town

Days 0-2: SFO - London - Cape Town, Wednesday - Friday, Aug 27-29, 2014

QOTD:

What's the word?

Tell me brother, have you heard

From Johannesburg?

Weather: Pleasant in E-ville, humid to rain in London then clearing, cool and breezy and very clear in Cape town

We’re flying British Air and haven’t been in this part of the SFO international terminal: they have a great Viola Frey ceramic tile piece. And, in the business class lounge, we’re sitting next to a loud party of oldsters (funerals, looking for card players, cops busting the craps game) so we’re disappointed we can’t board early. Good news, they aren’t sitting near us.

Flight leaves at 7:30pm, and arrives on time in London around 1pm. We have a decent layover so G&M (the hosts of THB and KBM during the London O’s) pick us up and treat us to brewskies and a half a roast chicken with chips (fries to you American types) at the Green Man pub. We sit outside in  the beer garden near an active runway and then something shifts and we are right underneath an active runway approach. Lovely, with slight pauses in the conversation every 90 seconds, until it starts raining.

Green Man Pub

Next flight leaves an hour late, at 8:30pm, so we have two redeyes back-to-back. For THB that equals about 5 hours of really bad sleep over the two flights, which total about 22 hours in the air. In hour 20, while moving the seat up and back and up getting ready for a meal, THB manages to lose his nano; it's small, and gone.

Yes, there appear to be a -2 and -4 floor

From the plane, dawn over Africa

Arrive in Cape Town at 9am, are met and transferred to our hotel, the Breakwater B&B, on the waterfront. Room not ready, so we go and load up our Icelandic phone with a S. African sim card for all of $10. Dine at a local sarmes (sp?) sandwich spot in a bakery that THB cannot remember the name of...JET LAG! No pic of place, nor of sandwiches (it came out blurry). THB did not remember the name of the bakery...sad, very sad. $17 for two chicken sandwiches, one bitter lemon, one tea (things are cheaper here).

Only pic from lunch spot: metal cup

Table Mountain in clouds

Table Mountain from Breakwater Hotel window

Back to hotel to check-in and find some oddities: they have three buildings, the middle building is also a college! And, in the room: there is one plug of the type THB was expecting (THB brought two adapters!) on one plug of the new type? And the plugs are as far from the bed as it can be, so the engineer had to bring us a super long extension cord. And, the shower is across the room from the sink/bath/toilet, so you get to drip dry on the floor on your way back to the sink to shave. And, to repeat, there are no plugs next to the bed for all of you who like to plug your left palm, er, your smart phone right next to you at night. And, the hair dryer that comes with the room is hardwired into a plug (below the other top plugs) in the back of a drawer. So, it isn’t in the bathroom, and it doesn’t work (the engineer comes back after we leave to fix that; i.e., get it to turn on, not move it to the bathroom).

Shower, shave, dry hair (DB brought a portable hair dryer) and head out to do some gallery shopping. Very nice visit to Stevenson (if you saw the S Africa artist exhibit at Yerba Buena, some overlaps) and a disappointing visit to Goodman Gallery (they carry Kentridge, none of which are in evidence).

Very early dinner at Burrata, a pizza place in the Old Biscuit Mill, a set of shops with art/design intent that close early (4pm). Two pretty good pizzas, a glass of wine, big brewski, $35.

Three cabs around town for a total of $25

Book Review1: Partick Leigh Fermor, An Adventure, Artemis Cooper: Begun in Hawaii, contued in E-ville, finsihed in Heathrow. A biography of a British travel writer, famous (?) for a series of books about Greece and two volumes of memoir from a walk through Europe in the mid 1930s when the author was just 18. Fermor was a savant: he spoke many different languages, memorized many songs and poems in many different languages, traveled widely (rarely staying in any one place for long), didn’t attend university, and was fully capable of drinking and carousing all night long. Also capable of extremely insensitive acts and kindness to the underdogs. A war hero for the successful kidnapping of a German general on Crete that had no bearing on the outcome of the war (the Allies were well on their way to victory). Recommended

Book Review2: A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain, Adrianne Harun: Set in a small Canadian town with both Native Americans and loggers, oil guys and some very bad people, with the main characters 5 17 year olds trying to be good. Best part is when a dying uncle tells stories, worst part is the ending (not unusual). Neutral