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Where better to stay than right at the Waterfront? The Waterfront Marina started off as a couple of blocks of luxury apartments in the yacht basin just behind the Alfred Basin and has expanded yearly to occupy every last bit of available space in the area. The whole development is now nearing completion and this will result in 550 apartment units and 200 yacht moorings. This part of the Waterfront is also the location of the mega-lavish One and Only hotel that should be completed early in 2009.
Rentals Cape Town has a good selection of apartments at the Marina all with the following qualities in common: - Spectacular views of the water (moorings, yacht basin, harbour and sea depending on position and level of the apartment) in front of you. The same goes for the mountain views behind you.
- Excellent security: guards on duty full time with two controlled and fully manned access gates.
- Proximity: walking distance to the Victoria Wharf shops and restaurants, Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) and the Cape Town city centre.
- Vehicle access to the N1 and N2 motorways that link you to all the urban centres in the Western Cape and the Cape Town International Airport.
- A choice of luxurious studio and 1 to 3 bedroomed units all with outside entertainment terraces.
{Clock Tower Centre} Intricate and octagonal, this bright orange tower building houses multifunctional mechanical gadgetry of its period in a flamboyant Victorian Gothic Industrial architectural design. Within this eccentric structure, completed in 1882 the Harbour Captain could keep accurate time, measure the exact tidal variation with the gauge mechanism below and maintain close surveillance on the harbour happenings from his very own room of mirrors on the second floor. All in all a sort of 19th Century super-computer. The tower was restored in the late 1990s and in the early 21st Century the area now known as the Clock Tower Centre was developed. It can be accessed from the greater Waterfront via a pedestrian swing bridge and this route really puts you in close touch with the harbour and many of its carefully restored buildings. There is a very attractive shopping centre here- much smaller and more touristy than Victoria Wharf but very pretty. Worth checking out is the Paulaner Brauhaus: sausage and sauerkraut accompanied by sturdy beers brewed in the shiny fermentation set up in the restaurant. On the water is a nice deck constructed to give the Cape Fur Seals somewhere to beach and relax in the midst of all the human and shipping activity. {Robben Island Gateway} The Robben Island Gateway operates the ferry service that will take you on the 10km sea trip to that small, bleak island that was the place of incarceration of Nelson Mandela for nearly 20 years until 1984 when he was transferred to a mainland prison and eventually released in 1990. The Chavonnes Battery is a 30 second walk away from the Gateway and here you’ll see the remains of fortifications built by the Dutch East India Company in the early 1700s. So much to do, so much to see- often the best thing to do is find a bench at the edge of the basin off the busy foot routes and quietly absorb the synergy of old, new, the city and the sea, commerce, industry and nature on this Cape of Good Hope, Southern Africa. |
