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No doubt you have been to many shopping centres and marveled at the fake Victorian, phoney Aztec or mock Martian themed corridors of stores, the roll-in roll-out parking ramps, fast-food arenas, entertainment wings and lifestyle piazzas. Undeniably, Cape Town’s Victoria and Alfred Waterfront (a.k.a V&A, The Waterfront, Cape Town Waterfront) is guilty of some of the above sins, being a collection of shops and restaurants stuck on the edge of a harbour, but it manages to do it with some grace.
Built on and around the old Victorian harbour in the early 1990’s the combo of retail, restaurant, residential, hotel and office usage with a working harbour and old port buildings makes for a successful and harmonious blend rather than a contrived cacophony. Where any good harbour should be it is at the bottom end of town, looking nicely up at the winged sofa back of Table Mountain and at the end of two national roads, the N1 and N2 that both originate at the Waterfront main gates and travel roughly NE and E respectively through the whole of South Africa. {What Rentals Cape Town likes very much about the V & A Waterfront}1) The Clocktower: More than just an octagonal orange tower building with a clock in it, it houses a quirky mechanism that measures the changing tidal level and down below is damp underground room once used as an uncomfortable transit lounge for lepers being shipped to Robben Island. 2) The walk from the Foreshore and Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) to Victoria Wharf: Past the opulent Cape Grace Hotel (with a shape like the deck and superstructure of an old cruise liner), over the small Bascule bridge with the yacht basin on your left (some not so small yachts with very long masts to be seen too), over a dry dock, bollards, cranes and ropes aplenty will really bring out your inner dockworker. 3) The tugboats that dock at the back of Victoria Wharf that look as if they could pull a titanic iceberg from Antarctica without their diesels even breaking into a sweat. Fittingly named in the relaxed Cape fashion after red wine grapes: Pinotage, Shiraz and Merlot. If you like white wine then Chardonnay is your boat. 4) The glass floor (reassuringly very thick) in the outdoor shop Cape Union Mart near Quay 4: you can watch the seawater splashing up the old slipway beneath you whilst trying on an appropriately nautical woolly jumper. 5) The micro brewery Mitchells and their beer outlet, The Scottish Ale House: A real anomaly having a working manufacturing concern in a place where the per square meter rentals are big and scary. Calm yourself down with one of their alehouse specials: Milk and Honey, 30 Shillings or Raven Stout. Naturally brewed, highly nutritious and inspiring of lofty thoughts. 6) Vaughan Johnson’s Wine Shop: That man in the apron that looks like a Vaughan Johnson really is Vaughan Johnson- purveyor of a good selection of Cape wines and cigars from his warehousey store adorned with wooden crates and blackboards inscribed with catchy sayings. Popular to wine drinkers as well as burly trawlermen thirsty for a six pack. 7) Sitting on a quiet dock edge (on Quay 6 between Victoria Wharf and the Table Bay is my favourite) with a take away coffee and a pastry, communing with the marine lifeforms: well, fending off muffin-crazed seagulls and being distantly polite to huge seals. 8) The bronze statues of Nelson Mandela, FW de Klerk, Desmond Tutu and Albert Luthuli, all South African Noble Peace laureates, the four of them standing discreetly out of the bustle in a little paved copse of carob trees. 9) The Chavonnes Battery: Another one of those almost-overlooked treasures sitting quietly amidst the slick design and retail allure of the Waterfront. Exhumed during the development of the Clocktower precinct and the building of the grand new offices of a bank, the Chavonnes Battery is another Dutch East India Company fortification built in the early 1700’s whose purpose was to fend off their competitors, the British and French East India Companies, and other nefarious seafaring baddies. 10) Chocolate- Along with protein and the correct fatty acids it is one of the essential food components and vital for optimal human health. Get yours at Taylor & Finlay, the little kiosk at Victoria Wharf. 50%ish cocoa content beehives with all manner of fillings. Start with Rum & Raisin, wait half an hour and move on to Marzipan… |
