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We set out along Kloof Street, where we cut through to the Mount Nelson Hotel, a large British Colonial hotel, dating from 1899. The hotel is set on several acres of park land with lavishly landscaped grounds. We walked right out to the back yard where we sat down and had a beer while enjoying the atmosphere. Right next to the hotel are the city's botanical gardens - not as impressive as some botanical gardens we have seen elsewhere, but a very nice large park anyways. On the way through the park, we stopped at the South African National Gallery (one of the few museum stops you will see us make on this trip, as we are not big museum people..). The gallery had a good sized collection of South African paintings, sculptures, and crafts. There was one really scary one that we just had to take a picture of - 3 devilish looking human-sized creatures sitting on a bench in the middle of one of the rooms. They were so realistic we had to touch one of them to make sure there wasn't someone sitting inside the plaster!
We made it just in time to the District 6 Museum, closing at 4pm. District 6 was one of the slums of Cape Town, packed with many of the city's blacks and immigrants during the mid 1800's. Due to a lack of building restrictions, the living conditions became very poor. Most houses consisted of only 1 room, and would house up to 16 people. The upper class residents of Cape Town became disgusted with the crime and low standards of living and in 1966, the National Party declared District 6 a "white only zone". This enabled them to completely bulldoze and destroy the area on the ground of slum clearance. They forced removal of over 150,000 residents and banned them to the Cape Flats outside of the city. The museum contains some original artifacts from the district as well as quotes and stories provided by the former residents.
After that, we took a cab to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, one of the more tourist parts of the city. Many of the very expensive hotels are located in this area. The waterfront is host to many touristy shops and restaurants, a large crafts market, a shopping mall, and the city aquarium. We strolled through some of the shops and the craft market. Mario bought 2 more t-shirts but I still haven't found one that I really like. There was some kind of large sea animal swimming out in the bay. We think it might have been a shark, as we heard that you can sometimes see them! But it was too far away to tell for sure, so for now it remains an unidentified lockness monster mystery.
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We had a full day of touring the city of Cape Town today. After a full night's rest last night and a good home cooked breakfast at our B&B this morning, we set out upon the city to see some of the sights. There is a lot to do in Cape Town, and there is no way we could cover it all in 1 1/2 days, but we tried!
Back in the park, we passed by the National Library and the Parliament building. We made our way to the Greenmarket Square, several blocks of the city street where local artists and street vendors are lined up selling crafts. There were so many tempting souveniers we could choose from. With our limited space, we have to weigh each choice very carefully, but luckily will be meeting up with my parents in a few weeks in Tanzania, so we'll be able to give them some of our things to bring home. 
We decided to buy 2 wooden carved African masks and also a hand-painted Ostrich egg (which seems to be a very common item for sale around here) - we were excited about the egg - because all of the other one's we had seen had mass produced prints on them. Ours appears to be hand painted :) and we got a good deal from the street vendor instead of in one of the retail shops. We were also very productive with some of the tasks we had to get done: Mario had to get a new cheap watch since his other one got ruined and stopped working from all of the humidity in Brazil (ridiculous), and next, we got Mario's camera bag strap repaired by a street vendor who repairs shoes and bags (and for only R10, or a $1.50US! 
We stopped by the Castle of Good Hope, which was constructed by the Dutch in the mid 1600's as a fortress. Unfortunately, it was just closing as we got there, so we only got to see the outside walls, and not very impressive as far as castles go (we saw it from the mountain too - not too big :). 
We looked at a bunch of the restaurant menus, but both had the urge to eat Thai food, which we had seen last night on Kloof Street. We took a cab there and had a great meal of red curry with shrimp and chicken in chili sauce. It really hit the spot. We've really been enjoying being able to eat pretty much anything we wanted at the last few cities, as Rio, Buenos Aires and Cape Town all claim to have clean drinking water. We haven't actually been drinking the water, but we've been more relaxed on eating risky foods such as salads and drinks with ice. Tomorrow we'll be heading out to the wine country to sample some of South Africa's many wines and hopefully get a feel for some of the countryside. 