We had prepared a pretty extensive itinerary for the trip- literally every meal, every grocery store trip, every little thing.  The first day was our first chance to decide that maybe we over-planned and maybe we could just go with the flow.

But we didn’t!  We totally stuck to the plan, eating at the super delicious Lola’s on Long Street.  Really great way to start.  Unlike previous trips, we were starting off with a strong food experience!  After brekkie, we wandered down to some markets and looked through some stores before heading to the Old Biscuit Mill, which is *not* a place where they make old biscuits, whatever that would mean, but is an area that presumably used to be a regular biscuit mill but was now a sort of handmade megamall.  Lots of cool everythings!  Handmade selvedge denim pants, screen printing, cool weird lamps!  Like Renegade Craft Fair or Crafty Bastards meets Union Market.

From here, we got an Uber (which was great and super convenient throughout the country, fwiw) to the Kirstenbosch Botanical garden, which was where the trailhead for the itinerary-defined hike to the top of Table Mountain was.  The garden was beautiful, but we were in a hurry to start the pretty-log hike up and across the mountain, so we didn’t linger too long.

Beautiful place for a cricket match!

The trail was steep, but super well marked.  Our jetlag wasn’t exactly our best friend at the time, but we were tough and fast and made it to the top, with some fun vistas along the way.  The top of the mountain was as flat as a name like Table Mountain suggests (it’s not somehow named after the parliamentary procedure to end discussion of a particular motion), but the walk across was cool.  Lotta fynbos, which is a thing you can look up.  There’s a big pile o’ rocks up there called Maclears Beacon, which you can see below, probably:

After the hike, we took a cable car down the mountain, called another car and went back to apartment to freshen up before drinks and dinner.  We went to a gin bar near our apartment, where I had a fantastic gin and tonic and the worst, grossest, saddest attempt at a Martinez cocktail ever.  Yikes.  Dinner at Savoy Cabbage was another great meal, though not as good as what would come! Unfortunately, we had to stop at a pharmacy to pick up some cold medicine as we’d contracted a little bug that would follow us around for the whole first half of the trip.