C’est La Vie bakery, Rosmead Road, Kalk Bay. They have wonderful French baguettes and other interesting breads. I read about them in the BA airline magazine on Sunday, and today I went to find them. They are a little out of the way but quite easy to fine. They also have a few tables outside where you can order sit-down meals, but we brought the baguettes home for lunch, and they are wonderfully fresh and chewy, just like a real baguette should be.
This shot of the harbour is taken from the small beach that is accessed through the subway at the bottom of Boyes Drive. I took it through one of the arches of the railway line bridge. It is a very nice (and surprisingly uncrowded) beach to relax on.
Cape to Cuba is (surprisingly) a Cuban restaurant in Kalk Bay, Cape Town. We have had several meals there, and they are generally very good. They also have a very casual pub area (think shorts and bare-feet) where they sometimes have live music.
Inside, the restaurant is a little like a rabbit warren. Rooms and corridors seems to extend all over the place, giving some open areas but many quieter areas with just a table or two in a room.
If you are in the area pop in; the food is good and the atmosphere is great.
(You can see the Kalk Bay harbour wall in the background)
In the short walk that I took through the Kalk Bay Village, I saw five street musicians (ok, 2 groups of 2 and a solo guy).
This guy was just jammin’ away on his guitar, making up the solos and chords as he played. He was accompanied on the bongo’s by his mate.
On Bongos
They were really good, somehow that had convinced the shop behind them to supply some free power, and they were just playing for whomever walked past, and that is something that I love about Cape Town. There is almost no regulation of street music; you can just play wherever you want. I hope it stays that way. It keeps the city alive.
These Jazz muso’s were busking on the beach by the harbour. They were playing local versions of some old standards.
I haven’t taken an HDR shot in ages (since I was in Italy in Oct last year), and the recent debates on digital photo school have raised my interest in it. So when I saw this car in Kalk Bay, it was the perfect opportunity.
The morning started very wet and rainy, but it cleared up into a surprisingly lovely day. The upside of this is that the beaches were almost empty, and I was able to enjoy a couple of hours in Kalk Bay.
We had lunch at an old established venue, the Brass Bell, where I have had many wonderful meals. Alas, they did not have a good start to the year. The starters were great, but after they arrived the restaurant clearly was too busy for the kitchen, and the mains were a disaster. Some did not arrive, most arrived late, some were burnt, and some were undercooked. I must note that my tuna steak and Lois’ pizza were the only good main courses. The food took over an hour to arrive, and what did arrive only did so after several complaints (note that we had booked a table).
In their defence, the manager was very good at accepting our complaint, and gave us about a 75% discount on the meal (I think we only ended up paying for the starters). If I do not remember this as such a good restaurant, I certainly would not go back, but they did try to make amends, and yes I will give it another chance, but not when they are so busy.
People walking along the harbour wall in Kalk Bay. In the front of them you can see the lights of the Harbour Hourse restaurant complex. You can also just make out Fish Hoek beach on the top left.
I was going to the Harbour House for dinner, but I went there a little earlier with my camera, so I also managed to get this shot of one of the fishing boats. You can see Kalk Bay main road in the background, with Cape to Cuba (a great restaurant) just behind the harbour.
This was an interesting person. He told me that he is from Pittsburgh, USA, but he has been loving in South Africa for many years. I bet he has an interesting story to tell, perhaps I will go back and listen to it.
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