My first activity – even before unpacking (simply because my luggage had not arrived at my cabin yet) – was “Tea Time” … a nice tea on the deck, watching table mountain and the loading of the ship.

Once I had my luggage, I started unpacking – only disturbed by the safety briefing and sea rescue exercise. The same was quickly followed by immigration and being stamped out of South Africa.

The ship nevertheless still was not cleared; we had dinner (and a first taste of what superb food was ahead of us) in the port. We only left Cape Town after a number of drinks (for me mostly with cucumber) and well after the midnight snack.

We concluded the city tour with a stop at the V&A Waterfront; here we also had lunch, before being transferred to the ship – MV Hanseatic.

At the port a committee was waiting for us handing out sparkling wine to welcome us.  After luggage identification, we were finally allowed to board the ship … I probably had been the first passenger in a while to board the ship in flip-flops 😉 .

The next day included a quick city tour, before finally getting to the ship in the later afternoon.

The city tour itself seemed a bit odd with some more questionable stops, nevertheless for me it was nicely complementing my tour, as it stopped at places, I did not really get the chance to have a look at on Monday.

We first left the buses at the Castle of Good Hope to witness the daily key ceremony and firing of the canon, we also had some (very limited) time to check out the castle. From here we continued downtown to visit the cathedral, have a walk through Company Gardens (with a high focus on botanics … (:| ) and finally end up in the South African Museum to see the exhibition on whales.