Friday November 1--High Tea and another dance performance

A lazy morning.  I slept until nearly 9:30.  Yesterday I had spoken with a cousin of a friend and made an arrangement to meet her at her store.  Her name and the name of her store is Balu.  http://www.balu.co.za    Not only is the store inviting but they also offer juices, coffee and muffins.  Even though I was going for high tea at 2, I had a fresh squeezed juice, a coffee and a freshly made cinnamon crumble muffin.  As Emily taught me, YOLO, you only live once.  Great philosophy. 

 

 When I come back from Simon's town next week I'm going to let her outfit me.  Her clothes are just my style.

When the weather is nice people sit outside on her lovely patio.

Balu was quite busy but she took the time to visit with me.  Her older daughter is a dancer and I told her about Emily's performance.  When i showed her a photo of Emily's teacher she knew who she was.  Balu was so nice she offered me to stay at her house when I return from Simons town.  Sometimes its good not to have made plans cuz you just don't know when opportunity will knock.

I had to get on my way as I needed to pick up Emily and Rose (Koper) to go to the Mt. Nelson hotel for high tea.

Emily thought it would be easiest for me to drive on the Main Road  which went all the way to her home stay.  It was Friday and I was on local streets with so much, yes, TRAFFIC.  I just can't get away from it.  I need to learn how to navigate the highways.  What was suppose to take 15 minutes took 30, but I arrived.  I got Emily then she drove to pickup Rose but we needed to stop at my hotel to get Emily's costumes because she'd left them there last night.  A bit out of the way which made us 30 minutes late.  Not a problem here.  We phoned the hotel and they were fine with it.

We arrived at the Mt. Nelson Hotel, a lovely refined 100+ year old hotel.  The pink color is similar to the Beverly Hills Hotel.  When I asked at reception if anyone had ever told them that, she said, "yes, we are compared to them all the time."

We were seated outside the main dining room on the covered balcony.  The weather was lovely but really windy.    

Emily said we needed to dress up, which we did, but there were many people in jeans.  It was more fun to be dressed nicely.  The spread was incredible.  We were all hungry since we hadn't eaten much all day preparing for our visit.  Here are some samples of what we ate.

First we had savory delights and then desserts.

We were offered to choose one tea and were given our own tea pot.  Here are the choices of tea.  The one I first chose, Lapsong Souche, was out of stock.

The girls had two savory plates before moving to the sweets.  So hard to choose what to try so we tried just about everything.

 in case you don't know what you are eating they made little signs on the different cakes.

As you can imagine after eating our delectible fare we could barely breathe.    

It was a bit after 4 and Emily needed to be at her dance call by 6.  After yesterday's traffic disaster, and being Friday, Emily thought it might be better to wait until closer to 6.  We went to the front desk to ask for directions and the gentleman concurred that it would be wiser to wait.  He said that actually people left work early on Friday and if we left at 5:30 we'd get to campus by 6.  We took his advise and took a walk on Kloof Street and back around to the hotel.

When the car came up from the garage, all three of us noticed that the plastic cover over the right headlamp was missing.

You can only imagine was ensued.  The parking attendant was insistent that we brought the car in that way and that they had the camera to prove it.  They said we could see the footage from the security camera.  O.k. well after waiting 15 minutes and no security person was coming we had to leave.  Are you kidding me.  The good news after this debacle was not having any traffic and Emily arriving 15 minutes early.  Horray.

Rose and I dropped Emily off and went back to my hotel so I could get the tripod for my camera.  I was able to video tape all of Emily's dances.  The show, I thought was better tonight than last night.  Many of Emily's friends and her home stay family attended her performance, which I know made her feel good.  

Rose and Emily went off to "go out" and I got in the car and went back to the hotel.

I took my things to my room and decided I would go to the bar and have a beer.  I just wanted to unwind a bit.  The bar was empty, which I enjoyed, and I ordered a local beer that was on tap called Jack Black.  The story the bar tender told me was that 2 boys from CTU (Cape Town University) found the beer receipe on the internet.  It apparantly originated in Texas.  They started making it in their garage with very small distribution.  A business man tasted it and thought it was great so started a bigger distribution.  Now it's one of the most popular beers in Cape Town.  Amazing what you can find on the internet.  One last note, a very large glass of beer was $2.00.