City Bowl Market on Hope – one-stop market for all your food needs

City Bowl Market

Is it just me, or has the Neighbourgoods Market at the Old Biscuit Mill in Cape Town become ridicu­lously busy, over priced and just plain unpleas­ant if you hap­pen to arrive at any time past 9am, and who doesn't?

I'm the last one to knock the Neighbourgoods. They're a first-rate mar­ket — they've out­las­ted the very best, they've set the bench­mark as far as excel­lent food mar­kets go, and could rival any sim­ilar European mar­ket. But enough already. It's really time for another mar­ket in the city bowl...

Enter stage left – the City Bowl Market — situ­ated on the rather obscure Hope Street in Gardens, which, not being a city bowl dweller myself, I man­aged to cap­ably miss for twenty minutes before finally find­ing it (but I did get to drive around Gardens, which was lovely). Continued

I ♥ Gardens Because ...

I ♥ Gardens

Hi, I’m Adri from Tintagel Guesthouse in Gardens, Cape Town City Bowl.

Gardens IS BEST KNOWN FOR its cul­tural diverse his­tory reflec­ted in the archi­tec­ture, museums, gal­ler­ies and life­style of the locals.

GET YOUR PICTURE TAKEN AT the fam­ous Rose Corner Café and other Malay houses painted in bold col­ors in the Bo Kaap.

THE BEST sun­set PICTURES CAN BE TAKEN AT the cable­way sta­tion on top of Table Mountain or the Noon Gun on Signal Hill over­look­ing the Bay.

OTHER HAPPY SNAPS AT the Mount Nelson Hotel – a beau­ti­ful old colo­nial style hotel with sprawl­ing lawns and a lovely con­ser­vat­ory. Treat your­self to their  tra­di­tional high tea. Continued

Biodiversity Garden — a wonderful visit in the shadow of the stadium

Biodiversity Garden

Remember the slight furore about the Common in Green Point, Cape Town round about the end of 2006, when plans for the new sta­dium became com­mon know­ledge? Locals of the neigh­bour­hood jumped up and down at the men­tion of the word 'sta­dium', sit­ing terms like 'white ele­phant' and 'destruct­ive to the envir­on­ment', which at the time, I thought pretty valid.

In real­ity, what used to be an admit­tedly green, but slightly dan­ger­ous, local ber­gie hangout is now a safe place for every­one. The Cape Town sta­dium has now earned a place in the hearts of (most) Capetonians (pulling huge crowds not only to watch soc­cer but also to hear the likes of U2), and there is also a park for chil­dren, a space in which to pic­nic, and a beau­ti­ful Biodiversity Showcase Garden. Continued

Child-friendly, tea-toting garden nurseries in Cape Town

Child-friendly nurs­er­ies

If you haven't already taken up garden­ing since hav­ing a wee bairn, there is always time. Garden nurs­er­ies have under­gone a metamo­phosis in the last gen­er­a­tion as more and more of them cater for chil­dren and par­ents gasp­ing for five minutes' down time in an envir­on­ment that isn't a shop­ping mall. And, inbetween, you acquire a plant or two. It's a win-win situation.

My all time favour­ite nurs­ery lies in the pretty south­ern sub­urbs. Ferndale is a clas­sic for chil­dren, and doesn't suf­fer from the pre­ten­tion or the 'nurs­ery super­mar­ket' syn­drome that some of the lar­ger, cor­por­ate nurs­er­ies (like Bugz in the north­ern sub­urbs) have suc­cumbed to. It does sadly lack a cof­fee shop, how­ever, the reason for which I have never been able to estab­lish – it's not as if there isn't room for one, or absence of demand; the place, on the con­trary, cries out for one ... Continued

Karoo Desert National Botanical Garden — get there to see the flowers

Quiver Tree

Before any con­fu­sion sets in, there has been a name change. No, it's not new. It just obvi­ously takes me a while to cot­ton on to these things. The Karoo Desert National Botanical Garden was known as the same, but without the 'Desert'. The fact that this change came about in 2001 had totally slipped me by. The addi­tion of 'Desert' is to point out the obvi­ous – that plants grown in Worcester are of a par­tic­u­larly arid nature; they're really dry and hardy to sur­vive the heat and wind, in other words.

I love desert plants. Those thick, bulky leaves that hold water for months on end with no appar­ent limit to their abil­ity to with­stand the desire for more (that I had such will­power when it comes to food). They man­age not to wilt, scorch or com­plain in the heat of the sum­mer months, and then at the vaguest sug­ges­tion of rain, they explode into a caco­phony of col­our and pro­duce flowers that leave you spell­bound. It is hard not to be pas­sion­ate about suc­cu­lents there­fore. Even the bog stand­ard pelar­gonium pro­duces flowers that inspire ... Continued

Open Gardens at The Cellars-Hohenort

Cellars-Hohenort

I took myself off to the Open Gardens at The Cellars-Hohenort yes­ter­day after­noon.  I must admit the weather was already a bit windy so I was in two minds about going but I’m very pleased I did.  The gar­dens are spec­tac­u­lar and are acknow­ledged as some of the finest hotel gar­dens in the world and voted by Garden Design, a top American magazine, as one of the top 30 hotel gar­dens in the world.

On arrival at the hotel I was met by five ducks and it looked as if they were out for an after­noon waddle, just to keep tabs on their estate!  Close behind them was their ‘minder’ who needed to round them up and take them ‘home’ but clearly this was not part of the equa­tion for the ducks at they scattered to hide in the thick foliage! Continued