This will be short since our “day” in Joburg was less than 24hrs and we spent a lot of it sleeping. But anyway, Joburg isn’t exactly the best city to just go and wander, so we caught a Uber (yep, there’s Uber in South Africa!) to a mall to grab some lunch and do some shopping/check out the local fare. The driver who took us from the airport told us about a staple in the South African diet called “pap”, which is pretty much polenta made with white corn so it’s a white color. And it’s amazing (Bridget was ambivalent). It’s typically served with “saus” (e.g. sauce) made from tomato and onion and “wors” (e.g. sausage) made from beef or pork. Our lunch also included chicken gizzard, fish, chicken meat, and fried plantains. Needless to say, I ate the chicken gizzard. But the food was good, albeit incredibly slow (evidently the norm in Africa). But since we weren’t in a hurry, it could have been worse.
After lunch we wandered the mall and realized that there was a lot more to it that we thought at first. And we found a Cinnabon!!! But since the holidays were over, I exercised my first modicum of self-control in months and just smelled them. And they smelled soooo good. Anyway, my exhaustion was starting to catch up to me, so Bridget let me take a quick nap (in the mall food court) before heading back to our hotel.
Now, this “hotel” was more like a big house that was built decades and decades ago. Fun fact: the original owner was actually a surgeon certified by the British Board of Surgery (or something like that) – the diplomas were on the wall in the office. Anyway, the house was on a nice little piece of property with a pool, a bit of a lawn, and a garden. We had a fancy little room with a balcony overlooking the backyard. Oh, and they had a Nespresso machine in the hallway so we could make coffee whenever we wanted. We didn’t really take advantage of it, but it was cool nonetheless! It was so nice to have a place to relax and adjust to the new time zone.
Pretty cool spot for an afternoon coffee
The amazing garden
Alright – back to the story. So we basically had to keep ourselves up late enough to sleep through the night. Bridget decided that 8pm would suffice. So, working backward, that meant dinner around 7pm. Since we were already back at the hotel/house and didn’t have a rental car and weren’t going to walk, we were left with basically one option: UberEats. My boss at work is a huge fan of UberEats so I figured it would be worth a try. We ordered some chicken (also a recommendation from the driver from the airport) and waited inside the house in the pouring rain until the poor guy showed up in a Tuk-Tuk scooter. Lucky for him, it was outfitted with plastic walls to keep him somewhat dry. And, the manager of the hotel opened up the garage so we could do the swap in there so nobody had to get wet. Imagine if we’d walked to dinner and had to walk back in a downpour! Score for UberEats! Anyway, we scarfed down the chicken and stumbled upstairs with exhaustion close in tow.
Our alarm never went off the next morning…because Bridget woke up at 3:15am and couldn’t count enough sheep to fall back asleep again. At 6:25am she woke me up to start packing up and to get ready for our 7am breakfast. Alright – so this breakfast (and the rest of the breakfasts we had in Africa) was amazing. The house/hotel had a little menu that you could fill out ahead of time with what you wanted to eat (both cold and hot foods) and what time you wanted to eat and they took care of the rest. Now, I realize that most hotels do this and it’s called room service, but this was different. We ate at the big wooden family dinner table in the dining room with bookshelves from floor-to-ceiling and a Persian rug on the floor (I actually don’t know if it was Persian but it did look like one of the rugs from those stores that are continuously going out of business). And they had another fancy coffee-making machine. So we loaded up on coffee, juice, omelets, Wheatbix, fruit-and-yogurt, and bacon. It pretty much ended my streak of self-control that started at Cinnabon the day before, but YOLO.
...looks BEAUTIFUL!!
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