Death of the Flower Girl

She comes towards the table, smiling, just-brushed hair and party frock, a wicker basket of red red roses clutched closely.

By the Saints, its the roving restaurant Flower Girl and she is about to dampen the next few moments of your evening. You might be in the middle of declaring undying love or a bitter argument, a punchline of the worlds best joke, the crucial stage of an invention. But that all becomes secondary as your new reality fills with roses, roses with LEDS flashing, Roses with teddies hugging their stems, roses off the cover of a Mills and Boon book (The Pregnant and Surgically Enhanced Mistress of the Gentle Arms Dealer Billionaire From Steamy Sorrento).

She's telling you that its for charity, that the proceeds of your purchase will go towards a child or animal or hospital for dolphins. The rose will cost you R30. Her face is a thin skin mask and there is something horned, fanged, primeval and writhing beneath it. Your freshly baked bread roll that's just soaked up the grassy olive oil feels like sour asphalt in your throat. The bill, a tip, parking, petrol and now this.

Is there a happy ending? Maybe not tonight- you sent her off like a leper, bought a rose or took the in-between chicken road and gave her 5 bucks for the baby dolphins.

Restaurants take heed: you don't let insurance and medical aid companies rove your shop looking for business; defend your patrons from the girl bearing flowers.

Nap @ New Cape Quarter

The sandwich board outside the shop that sells furniture and light fittings says "Snack, Eats, drinks etc." Is it too much to hope that they are all for free? For me to enjoy whilst looking at a piece of prettily arranged gnarled root.

It was too much to expect but the place was away from the restaurant and coffee shop killing zone and felt a lot more relaxing.

Here I am then, on a Nap sort of rustic scaffolding plank bench with a prices tag of R895 on a shaded terrace. I've got a view of Signal Hill, a rich fruity muffin (R20) and a strong americano (R15) and I've just seen one of the centre's cleaners drop her cell phone into her bucket of floor washing water. It still worked when she fished it out. Bubbles came out of the speaker when she got an sms. I said that's what you'd expect of a Nokia, built tough. She said it was a Samsung.

Stay at the New Cape Quarter and experience your own twists-in-the-tale and intrigue around De Waterkant. Have a look at our accommodation at www.rentalscapetown.com

Pizza and Profanity at Big Bay- Col' Cacchio

Why is it called Big Bay? Where do you go for pizza if you live in a small village 40km from Cape Town? How do two of you have wine and then drive home without getting apprehended and incarcerated for the rest of the weekend? (And can you keep your cell phone on you whilst in jail?)

Most of of these riddles will remain unsolved for some time. But the meaning of "Col' Cacchio" in English ? That's easy. Put it into Google Translator set it from Italian to English and push the button. "With 'heck" is what the all knowing and all seeing robot comes up with, "up yours" is what the other sources say. Now you know.

Col' Cacchio is a pizza and pasta franchise. Lots of pizza choices arranged in ascending price and topping complexity. A handful of not the most inspiring pastas and salads for the pious make up the rest of the menu. Franchised restaurants make you think of walking into some themed place with totem poles or Irish artefacts that you'd only venture into at an airport or when disorientated in a broodingly sinister environment like N1 City. This franchise stays safely away from the red, white and green flags, quotes from Mama and Ferrari posters.

We wanted predictable, not too expensive, efficient with a view and that's what we got. 2 pizzas from the middle of the menu, a glass of Raka pink wine to share, a bottle of our own wine, R20 corkage, and a coffee to share cost R205, tip included. And views of Table Mountain and Robben Island for free, no extra charge for tables of 8 or more.

36 hours in Camps Bay: The Neptune, Maranellos, The Hussar and some exercise.

The hibiscus bush waves and makes leafy sounds in the odd energetic gust outside on the verandah of our Ground Floor Superior garden unit. I'm glad it is a hibiscus bush, if it was a bush of indeterminate type I would not have been able to use it as a scenic mood-setter for this Camps Bay chapter. I'm looking at the bush again wondering how to brew it into a healthful cup of hibiscus tea.

These are the sort of thoughts you have when the surroundings and comfort around you have smoothed off the jagged edges that stress has etched onto your wave form.

We’ve got 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. 1 of the bathrooms is en-suite and the other conveniently placed so as to be within easy reach of the living area and bedroom 2. The fittings and decor are a consistent theme of uncluttered rectilinear polished wood with upholstered creamy bits to sit on, lie on or affixed to the wall to muse at. I like the expansive and blocky central sofa thing in the lounge: part chaise-longue, part bed and part railway platform it compels you to recline and reach for the flat screen’s remote controller or your Nancy Drew Omnibus. There are sliding doors from the main bedroom and lounge to the verandah and garden from where you can just about see the sea and where there is a good-sized crystal clear swimming pool. 2 pools actually: if you go round the corner of the building there is another pool bordered with wooden decking. What else? The second bedroom has two single beds, bathroom en-suite to the main bedroom has a shower and the second bathroom has a bath with a shower and glass enclosure built around it. The dining room has a glass table that seats 6 and the kitchen has pretty much everything you need. The units are serviced every day so no need for a dishwasher. The living area is air-conditioned, there is a landline telephone where the rates are more favourable for phoning local numbers. There is also a wifi antenna in the garden that beams on the complex giving you fast internet access. If your service provider is MWeb or IS or a handful of others you can jump on the network for free by just logging on. If not then a credit card will buy your bytes.

 

 

The Neptune consists of 1 and 2 bedroom flats in one complex. With  the large,landscaped grounds, sloping terrain and open walkways and galleries giving access,  each apartment has an almost freestanding feel.

On our first night in Camps Bay we went to Maranellos. It used to be called Luigi's Trattoria and the menu seems to have expanded under the new Ferrari inspired name. The big and fragrant frangipani tree is still in the private courtyard but it was windy enough to blow the tagliatelle of your fork so we sat inside. Chorizo type sausage folded pizza was my choice and Rose had the fish. I like to think that a calzone comes with more filling than its 2 dimensional counterpart.

Here we are up on Hely Hutchinson Rd having a run. With gentle beaches and many furlongs of restaurant frontage to lounge at it is easy to be contrary and try out the roads, grass verges and pavements of the high altitude reaches of Camps Bay. The road slopes cruelly upwards, the wind hootles and shrieks and we stride and grimace like something out of Chariots of Fire. O Clouds unfold...

It was then neccessary to replenish spent kilojoules on Saturday night. The Hussar Grill in Green Point once allowed us to use their bathrooms as non-patrons. We vowed to repay the kindness by eating there. This was their Camps Bay branch that we went to.  The Hussar specialises in being a steak place. They will tell you to the day how old their meat is: 28 days is the play-it-safe optimum age for a well stored steak. Up to 31 days is doable but the meat needs the final scrutiny by the Hussar of steaks before being flung on the grill. We wents for the massive 840g of hog ribs. With chips. To share. Tender, delicious and delicate flesh. The meat for firemen, explorers and hog farmers with a sensitive leaning. And bring your own wine if you want 'cos there's no corkage.

Make Camps Bay your town for a weekend or a month by contacting us at Holiday Rentals Cape Town.

We visit Stellenbosch and find it pleasing

Sitting on the stoep of Rose Cottage at Glenconner in the Jonkershoek Valley of Stellenbosch. All is very, very pretty. The vines are all a-trellised. The properties are grand and the Eerste River looks just swell. The horses have done their contractually specified 1/4 mile gallop, spring and back roll in the paddock before going back to just looking like pretty, underemployed and inedible livestock. The river's murkiness and odd supermarket bag gambolling over the big round pebbles add a lively worldliness to flowing waters only minutes from their source up in the mountains. Sort of like a 10 year old girl sporting nail varnish on her toenails. But then any lacquered toenail is just plain ugly, I have just taken off Noontide Bruleé from mine forever and ever.

As Talk Talk said in the 1980's: The Party's Over and in less than 24 hours we will be back home and back to work. Not that that is a bad thing. Anyway what's more work anyway: wading from a carpark into the supermarket to stock up on milk and Handy Andy and black peppercorns or speaking to nice people on the phone and via email?

And there's the home coming walk around the garden to check out the tomato and onion crop and see if the Sausage Tree still hasn't succumbed to the sour earth syndrome that lurks in the southern corner of our garden.

What's been good? What's been un-good? What has made these 5 or 6 days at Glenconner's Rose Cottage in Jonkershoek, Stellenbosch blow away all the other holiday experiences of the last 41 years of my life. Even better than when my mother organised a week for us at the Beacon Island Hotel in Plettenberg Bay in about 1981; a package put together by Fair Lady magazine. Me and my sister still can't get over the blue sarong and t-shirt with whale motif we each found in our ultra luxurious hotel room.

The Holiday Rentals Cape Town list of good stuff here in Stellenbosch:

1) De Oewer restaurant on the banks of the Eerste River. I thought Eerste River was an industrial area next to N1 City until a few days ago. This restaurant is coupled with another Die Volkskombuis and had good food and a perfect evening outdoor setting with skilled service and burning braziers everywhere. Burn yours sometime.

2) DSTV @ Rose Cottage - Blackadder and MNET films and watching even better SABC and eTV films via a decoder. There is so much TV out there. A whole weekend of 80's music on VH1. There is no need for the cruel outside world. Give me more shelter behind bad hair and vintage video concepts.

3) Die Wijnhuis- On Rose's birthday. Thin and tender veal and good ole sole with champagne and shrimp sauce.

4) The Jonkerhoek Tea Room (please forgive me if I have the name wrong, it might be the Jonkershoek Coffee House or Place of Holy Carrot Cake of Jonkershoek). At the entrance to the place of forestry and good mountain bike tracks. Many places that are perfectly located in scenic areas with high volumes of human traffic passing by their doors seem to make it their duty to ensure that there is at least some tarnish to your experience by creating a dull menu of of instant pie and Orley Whip. This place does a thick and rich carrot cake and a good burger.

5) Ginos: R80, R90, R115, R154. These are the prices that we are becoming immune to for a main course. Swill it all down with at least a 100 bucks worth of wine and say hello to a credit card statement that will bring on bout of jaundiced wallet. Ginos are happy to take no more than R75 for their main courses. My oval pizza with chicken livers and mozzarella was R55 and was made from a dough that had a beautiful bend and bite to it. They are on Dorp St in an old Cape Dutch building, with oak trees in the garden. Corkage is R10 which adds a nice unexpected twinge to the experience, like finding a little model
car in your bowl when you've just poured your breakfast muesli into it.

6) Cupcake: Little shoes, yellow rubber ducks, woollen baby clothes and a dauntingly good pan-grilled emmenthaler and ham sandwich with wholegrain mustard. I'll have another coffee with that apricot mini-cardigan...

7) The Spar Liquor Store: Le Pommier Cabernet Sauvignon for about R40 @ 15% alchohol per bottle. Heavy and healthy.
8) Oak trees- the theft thereof. Riding around on a stealth bicycle with a slim trowel digging up acorn saplings to transplant in Philadelphia. Once you’ve deviated onto the path of guerilla botany there is no turning back.