Alive and well and awake in Cape Town. Finally!

Hi all! I'm sure you've all been waiting breathlessly for an update to our trip, especially since we've been mostly off the grid. Okay, just haven't had access to the internet. We're finally here in Cape Town and it only took us 3 days of traveling to get here. Three. Whole. Days. I discussed the perils of flying standby in a previous post and I have to say that this time my stress level hit Defcon 1 because we quickly became aware that it is almost impossible to fly standby to Johannesburg from Atlanta. That flight is almost always full with paid customers. We got bumped Sunday night and there wasn't much chance of getting on the plane for the next couple of nights (there is only one flight a night) so we decided to get "across the pond" by flying standby to London and buying tickets from there. We've flown standby to London once before and it's an easy flight to get on and, just like last time, we got business class! Yay! While waiting for our flight we decided to look for cheap tickets from there to Cape Town. No such thing. Okay, how about cheap tickets from London to Johannesburg? Nope. There were semi-affordable tickets on British Airways but only if we left London on the 5th instead of the 4th. Okay, we'll spend 24 hours in London. We had enough Marriott points to stay at a very posh Renaissance hotel, the St. Pancras, which was also in a good location. Here's a picture

It used to be a railroad station and it is beautiful inside and the service is superb.

After cleaning up and unpacking a little we bought tickets from the concierge for the Big Bus tour and off we went. The tickets are pricey (31 pounds each, about $62.00) but they are good for 24 hours, all the different routes, includes the Thames river boat tour and any of 3 walking tours. Hop on, hop off. Here is a picture from the tour.

Crossing the Tower Bridge.

What we didn't know is that the Blue line tour (the bus we hopped on to) takes 3 1/2 hours! Since we got a late start (about 4pm) and had not eaten since breakfast on the plane, we got off of the bus at 6:30, hopped on a Red bus going back towards our hotel and hoped to catch the Green Link that would take us just one block from there. Nope. The Green Link was done for the night. Okay, we'll catch the tube. After walking about 5 blocks we came to the tube station and the ticket agent was amazed that we wanted to buy a ticket to King's Cross station as were just a 25 minute walk from there. Well, 25 minutes if I had been in decent shape but with my ankle killing me it took us about 40 minutes (not including the time we took for a very mediocre traditional English dinner at a small hotel cafe) but we made it back to the hotel and fell asleep by 9 pm as we were exhausted.

The next morning we packed and had the hotel store our luggage while we went on theThames river boat tour. We don't have any pictures from that because Don left the memory card for the camera in the netbook. Too bad, there were some outstanding views. But first we stopped for breakfast at a pub just blocks from the hotel. Another mediocre meal. The boat tour was great however and we got back to the hotel in time to catch a taxi back to the airport to catch our flight to Johannesburg.

About London prices: shockingly expensive! I knew London was pricey, it is one of the most expensive cities in the world to visit or live in but I had no idea. $144.00 for a taxi from the airport to our hotel, bus and tube tickets start at $5.00 one way, the express train to the airport from the station closest to our hotel (not so close, we would still have had to take a $30.00 taxi ride to get there) is $42.00 each, coffee is $6.00, a soda was $7.00, at least beers were affordable, about $4 to $6 for a pint.

Anyway, we got on the plane to Johannesburg at 7 pm and landed at 7 am, an 11 hour flight (one hour time difference) and then caught a plane to Cape Town 3 hours later. We finally arrived at our home away from home at about 1:30 pm, just utterly exhausted. We met Reg and Anne, Russell's parents, and John, the houseboy. They showed us around and how things worked and left. We unpacked and then drove to the nearest grocery store to buy enough provisions for dinner that night and breakfast the next morning. Even that was an adventure for us, they drive on the left here. We managed to stay up until 8:30 and then had to go to bed, I think we had about a total of 6 hours sleep in the last 48 hours.

Up next: Cape Town is surprisingly affordable, more driving on the left, crime and caution, it's cold here at night, plus pictures!