Penguins at large

Simon's Town

Saturday, January 06, 2007

We took the train to Simon's Town this morning, again missing the train by a few minutes having to wait thirty minutes for the next one to arrive. It was an hour or so ride, but quite interesting travelling through the southern suburbs toward the East coast of the Cape, the Indian Ocean. When we got to the False Bay stop we could see the ocean, big waves and the kids began to get excited. Too bad it was a cooler day, around 22C so it wasn't great for swimming. The train tracks were so close to the water at times it felt we were on the beach and we found out later that we were. Simon's Town is the port for the South African navy so we saw some fairly large frigates docked. The quest for the journey was the penguins. Since it began to drizzle when we got off the train, we walked quickly into town and found a spot for a light lunch, at least it was supposed to be light. We found a café and the kids had French Toast, Carla had a nice quiche and I had an English breakfast…the bacon here is so much better than Canadian bacon…along with a nice brewed coffee. To all the Timmie's crew - I've been getting by with instant coffee here which isn't great at all. This was a nice change. Our café overlooked the harbour. We had a nice chat with a local couple who offered to take us up on some hikes…we are excited about these great contacts. We exchanged numbers. We also met with a family who had kids going to the exact same schools that ours will be in. Good to have some familiarity beforehand.

We then proceeded to walk to see the jackass or African penguins as they are now called. Basically they sat on the beach while we walked on the board walk to view them at Boulder's Beach. The kids enjoyed playing on the big rocks. The water was nice, not terribly warm, but quite comfortable.

Yesterday we walked to Claremont to pick up some of Henry's uniform from Woolworth's at "the mall". He looks quite smart all done up in a sports coat and shorts! We'll post pictures on this one for sure. It was quite a walk, and so we took the train back to Mowbray. The train we were waiting for went right by without stopping. This was a surprise for everyone on the platform (and probably for those that were in the train wanting to get off). We decided to pick up some samoosas (most of the train stops have a little convenience store) and snack before we got home for some homemade pizza.

 

Pictures at the picture site…

http://picasaweb.google.com/steveyens

<div style="text-align:center;width:194px;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:83%"><div style="height:194px;background:url(http://picasaweb.google.com/f/img/transparent_album_background.gif) no-repeat left"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/steveyens/20070106SimonsTown"><img src="http://lh3.google.com/image/steveyens/RaD6N8XgpXE/AAAAAAAAALc/Cme9f6Kuasw/s160-c/20070106SimonsTown.jpg" width="160" height="160" style="border:none;padding:0px;margin-top:16px;"></a></div><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/steveyens/20070106SimonsTown"><div style="color:#4D4D4D;font-weight:bold;text-decoration:none;">2007-01-06 Simons Town</div></a><div style="color:#808080"></div></div>