An unabashed tourist and her family explore the world one holiday at a time.
Seagulls squawk overhead and the salty tang of an ocean breeze tints the air. Gareth and I are sitting at a seafood shop at the harbour in Hout Bay, one of the many small towns that dot the Cape Peninsula just outside of Cape Town. This is surely one of the most picturesque of them and just sitting here makes...
“There it is! There’s the boomslang!” It’s not every day that I’m excited about a tree snake, and this day is no exception. The Boomslang is not some slippery cold thing with a forked tongue come to haunt my waking hours, but rather the name of the tree canopy walkway at Kirstenbosch Gardens, Cape Town’s botanical gardens situated at the...
On our way back to Cape Town from our recent quick visit to Hermanus, we stopped at Delheim Wine Estate. We’d heard that they do a wine and cupcake tasting experience, and since I can’t say no to a cupcake, we had to go try it out. The estate is situated on a farm just outside of Stellenbosch. Scenic countryside...
Cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, coffee… These are all spices you’ll find in the kitchen cupboard, but do you know where they come from or what they taste like before they’re packaged and branded and sold in the supermarket? Neither did I, which is why I found the spice tour we took around a plantation in Zanzibar intriguing. We had two local...
If you’ve been following along on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, you’ll know that last weekend was our annual trip to Hermanus to go whale watching. It was what I like to call a blitzkrieg – we flew in on the Saturday morning and out again on Sunday evening. Short and sweet. What’s more, it was baby’s first trip on a plane, and...
Seasick and swaying slightly from the rough crossing, we were hustled onto a bus the moment we set foot at the docks of the infamous Robben Island, with hardly any time to look at the series of placards explaining the former prison island’s history. Apparently we weren’t going to get a chance to explore by ourselves. Was this intentionally so...
The Afrikaans Language Monument just outside of Paarl in the Western Cape is impressive. It was designed with the intention of showing how fast Afrikaans, one of the world’s youngest languages, grew through the shape of a rapidly ascending curve. That’s the intention. The reality is, it’s an embarrassingly large phallic symbol erected by a patriarchal society to boast about...
When I was much younger I toyed with the idea of becoming an astronaut (I think this was right after my phase where I wanted to be a detective like Nancy Drew or the girl who rides the elephant in the circus). Unfortunately, growing up at the bottom end of Africa doesn’t really allow for much opportunity to head into...
I finally know why all my friends with children had become boring. As it turns out, having a baby and a full-time job does not leave much room for anything else. Most evenings, after the evening meal, bath time, play time and, finally, rocking baby to sleep time, I’m left with just about enough energy to either sit down and...
Whenever he gets the chance, Gareth drags me off to see cars on display. We visited the Ferrari museum while in Italy, which I found extremely boring (but who am I to come between a man and his lifelong obsession?). So with good grace I relented yet again and let him take me to the Franschhoek Motor Museum. After all,...