Cape Town Apartment Chronicles

Making Do in Cape Town

As a writer of blogs, I could write a review and start a travelogue of all the apartments we have stayed in, the restaurants we have visited, and other venues, whether for tourists or not. However, I suspect you are more interested in your holiday than in a commentary, especially about things not going right.

We checked out early from a place in Rugby to take another apartment in Pinelands. This is something we usually do: splitting our living arrangements in two and having an overlapping day to move from one location to another. Only once have we not done this, because the new place was just 200 metres away and the host had agreed to an early check-in.

The Rugby Apartment

The place in Rugby was one we liked after a few adjustments, including a visit from the host to try to make amends. However, the critical issue, as Brian noted, was that the place lacked a feminine touch. Broadly, it offered just the practical things for essential apartment living. For days, this niggled until the microwave played up and I had to use a mug to scoop food into another pot.

So, I wrote to the host to highlight the issues rather than complain, and this reflects some of what we have experienced with apartments in Cape Town.

Hello, I'm staying at your apartment with my partner. At first, I thought we could manage, but I need to inform you of a few things before I write a very honest review of our experience. It is a lovely place; we are comfortable and feel safe. However, you cannot manage a property from a lock box.

We are very domesticated people and are usually in Cape Town twice a year, sometimes for more than a month, staying in places as varied as Camps Bay, Sea Point, Foreshore, Muizenberg, and Bloubergstrand since 2019. We have a good idea about apartments, service, and the quality of accommodation.

First, we asked for a spare set of keys, which, as I informed you, we have always had with other places. Then, the size of the apartment is about half the over 600 square feet advertised on Booking.com.

Basic stuff: not enough hangers in the bedroom, many crooked. That's manageable. You have a kitchen but no kitchen knife; we bought one yesterday, just as there are no kitchen scissors. The Power Defrost and Power Level buttons are not working on the microwave. This was the last straw for me, because the prawns for our stir-fry ended up cooked, or we would have had to wait hours for a proper thaw.

The clothes rack should have been replaced; it is full of rust, and we can't hang clothes on it. We could use the clothesline, but we are strangers here. There is a litany of things I could list about the homeliness of your place, but we can manage. As I have said, you will need to visit your apartment to see that things work or are right. Having a lock box is not a substitute for that responsibility. Thank you.

We ended up buying a proper kitchen knife, and this is the third time we have had to do this. It could have happened many more times if Brian had forgotten to bring the typical kitchen utensils we had acquired over time: spatulas, a sauce ladle, and some deep bowls.

When the host came to visit, some 30 minutes behind schedule, he brought a set of ten hangers and a bottle of plonk that might have passed for cooking wine, if Brian's taste for alcohol had not got the better of him.

Moving to Pinelands

After church yesterday, we packed up for this new place in Pinelands, which backs onto a Jewish cemetery just about 150 metres away and is clearly visible from the seventh-floor window. You can bet my vivid imagination is under serious curtailment, and I hope the rational will overwhelm the irrational, as I do not intend to lose my mind in the process.

We encountered the usual issues again. People do not cook, hence the kitchen setup is lacking. Once, we had to buy a pot, and this place has just one pot for cooking. There is no kitchen knife, but we already have one. Surprise: there is a pair of scissors in the kitchen drawer.

There is a thriving takeaway and fast-food culture in South Africa, where ingredients for food can be organic, fresh, and healthy, but people are not cooking, except when they have a braai.

Two bedrooms, not really the size that was advertised, but that is a minor point. There is a worktable from where I am typing, but no centre table in the living room, as if we should eat off our laps. In the fire escape, we found two stools and a floor mat that matched the one in the apartment. I think we can consider ourselves resourceful.

Making the Space Work

We had to change the orientation of the bed, as it was just wrong. When our hostess returned that afternoon, she agreed that the realignment was better. However, what I cannot understand is the dearth of sockets in these apartments. We had to get extension leads with dual sockets to have somewhere to plug in our devices.

She cannot remember the Wi-Fi password, as the two she provided did not work. Meanwhile, I found a way around the issue. The Google TV box connected to the television has a Wi-Fi hotspot feature, but when switched on, it disables the Wi-Fi connection. Usually, the WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) button on the router should work, but we failed to get a link.

I connected the Google TV box to the router with an Ethernet cable and set up the Wi-Fi hotspot. That way, we have Internet connectivity without the fuss, or we would have had to wait until Tuesday to get that sorted.

Meeting Miranda Priestly

We joined her in the lift and, whilst she understandably refused entry to another resident with a shopping trolley (though there was enough space for all of us), it was the mother holding a baby that she barred, which left us stunned. Her explanation: "I am the Miranda Priestly of this apartment block." The funny thing is, on my first visit to South Africa in May 2015, I did watch The Devil Wears Prada on my outward flight. I did not expect to meet her in real life.

We have different panoramic views of Table Mountain, and just a glimpse of the sea, even though it is almost seven miles away. For that alone, I am not so forlorn this far inland in Cape Town.

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