When in Nelspruit: shop 'til you drop

When in Nelspruit ...

Nelspruit is fondly known as Nellies by those who live there, and Mbombela by all that is offi­cial, although you are still alright for signs on the high­way – most of these still indic­ate Nelspruit, for those as dis­trac­ted as I am.

There has been an offi­cial name change. Nelspruit, home of Radio Laeveld 100.5 fm, is called Mbombela. But since this happened only in 2009, and the city was still offi­cially referred to as 'Nelspruit' for the World cup, and all road signs (as I already men­tioned) still call the city Nelspruit, there is some obvi­ous confusion.

The only people uncon­cerned are the many traffic offi­cials who zoot around in smart cars emblazoned with Mbombela Traffic, which had the rather sober­ing effect of ensur­ing that I main­tained the ridicu­lous speed limit of 70 km per hour on the N4 through the city, des­pite the double car­riage­way. I was in a bor­rowed car! Continued

Picadillis in Middelburg, Karoo

Picadilli's in Middelburg

I recently bought the sweetest little scarf.  My brother and I were en route to Ficksburg from Graaff-Reinet and stopped in Middelburg for a) Karoo biltong and b) pet­rol (in that order of import­ance).  To be hon­est, Middelburg is not much to look at but our biltong search was prov­ing futile (I know, you wouldn't think so, it was the Karoo after all!) so we drove around the town a bit try­ing to find a butchery.  Right at the end of a road I spot­ted a mus­tardy col­oured shop called Piccadilli's.  ‘Let’s try down there’ I said to Gareth and he duly turned left and steered us towards the shop in ques­tion ... Continued

8 GREAT spots to buy handmade in the Cape

Imiso ceram­ics

Nothing has quite the appeal of hand­made when it comes to gifts and extraordin­ary products for around your home. Particularly as these days, hand­made no longer means  your aunt pro­duced it in wool that she had lying around the house. Nowadays, hand­made comes very closely asso­ci­ated with terms like 'green', 'eth­ical' and 'soph­ist­ic­ated', and one is sur­roun­ded by slo­gans that include 'the hand­made pledge!' and 'I buy hand­made' and indeed, there are now so many dif­fer­ent unique gifts and products in the craft world that hand­made has taken on a life of its own.

In the Cape, craft shop­ping for hand­made is BIG. There are shops crawl­ing out of the wood­work, many of them boutique-style, upmar­ket show­cases of the diversity, fun and cre­ativ­ity of craft pro­du­cers in this coun­try, with vibey, soph­ist­ic­ated names that pre­pare you for select craft objects, rather than the sym­pathy products that used to pass as hand­made craft. Continued

The grand opening of the Cape Quarter’s Square

Cape Quarter

This is one of Cape Town’s best kept secrets because it has some­thing for every­one, health, beauty, fash­ion, life­style and food all in one unique venue with typ­ical Cape Malay archi­tec­ture. This is a place that epi­tom­ises cool and if you want to be with the who’s who then you should make your way to the Cape Quarter ...

This is such a fant­astic space that is brought together with the cent­ral piazza which in itself is a meet­ing place for friends and fam­ily before they explore the Cape Quarter’s won­der­ful oppor­tun­it­ies and hid­den treas­ures. The Cape Quarter Piazza can be found at 72 Waterkant Street, Green Point ... Continued

Cape Town Craft Markets

Greenmarket Square

Shopping is one of those small joys in life. Although there's a lot to be said for the simple things in life that don't require money, some­times noth­ing makes you feel quite as good as buy­ing some new stuff. That said, big shop­ping centres offer the same thing all over the world and find­ing some­thing unique to an area is becom­ing more and more dif­fi­cult. Craft mar­kets have long been a part of Cape Town's way of offer­ing altern­at­ives to main­stream shop­ping. Several mar­kets exists, each com­pletely dif­fer­ent to one another, and each offer­ing a spe­cial little piece of Capetonian lifestyle.

Greenmarket Square is argu­ably the most well-known of Cape Town's mar­kets. Filled with African curios, hand­craf­ted fash­ion and jew­ellery, this bust­ling hub of informal trad­ing is in the middle of the Central Business District in Cape Town. Going to Greenmarket Square is an exper­i­ence in itself. Don't be sur­prised to find drum­mers, dan­cers and traders of all kinds in the cobbled square that houses the mar­ket. Be warned, how­ever, the traders are voci­fer­ously friendly and learn­ing a few of the golden rules will stand you in good stead. Continued