The New Place
We got the apartment we've been lusting after for weeks, and yesterday was our move in day. We loaded up our newly purchased (but hardly new) VW Golf with all our stuff and drove over early in the morning.
Then we took delivery of a bed and a fridge, both arranged yesterday once we found out for sure that we had the place. The apartment has a stove, which is more than we can say about pretty much everything else we looked at, but any sort of device for keeping food from spoiling would have been too much to hope for.
We left behind a very nice and very accomodating woman named Gill, who rents out half her house to tourists in a very, VERY upmarket suburb called Constantia.
Constantia was so upmarket that it felt a little too much like northern California, where I grew up. No offense to northern California, but I didn't quit my job and fly for the better part of two days just to end up back there.
I couldn't put my finger on it at first, but when we walked into the Constantia Mall for the first of many visits, Katie nailed it on the head. "This is Palo Alto," she said.
And how right she was. The marble. The attitude. The piped in elevator music. There weren't even any black people in the mall, except for the employees.
So we're glad we're out of there--though Gill was a fantastic host--and we're glad to be living in a place that is slightly more diverse. And you can't beat the view.
Even here in our new neighborhood, it's hard to shake that California feeling, but I suppose I should get over it. If nice people, great food and wine, and lots of green hills translates in my own head into a California vibe, I guess that's not Cape Town's fault.
Then we took delivery of a bed and a fridge, both arranged yesterday once we found out for sure that we had the place. The apartment has a stove, which is more than we can say about pretty much everything else we looked at, but any sort of device for keeping food from spoiling would have been too much to hope for.
We left behind a very nice and very accomodating woman named Gill, who rents out half her house to tourists in a very, VERY upmarket suburb called Constantia.
Constantia was so upmarket that it felt a little too much like northern California, where I grew up. No offense to northern California, but I didn't quit my job and fly for the better part of two days just to end up back there.
I couldn't put my finger on it at first, but when we walked into the Constantia Mall for the first of many visits, Katie nailed it on the head. "This is Palo Alto," she said.
And how right she was. The marble. The attitude. The piped in elevator music. There weren't even any black people in the mall, except for the employees.
So we're glad we're out of there--though Gill was a fantastic host--and we're glad to be living in a place that is slightly more diverse. And you can't beat the view.
Even here in our new neighborhood, it's hard to shake that California feeling, but I suppose I should get over it. If nice people, great food and wine, and lots of green hills translates in my own head into a California vibe, I guess that's not Cape Town's fault.
posted by Erik at 12:35 pm
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