Checking into the Cape Grace Hotel Cape Town

Prologue: I’m a bit behind doing posting so the Cape Town posts were written a few days ago when we were in Capetown. I’m on the Zambezi River Cruise now sailing down the Chobe River, so the coverage is next to nil right now. I wrote the Capetown blogs already but can’t upload many photos now so will do that when I get to Victoria Falls in a few days. This trip has been AWESOME so far! The start of our trip in Cape Town starts below:

After clearing customs in Cape Town, South Africa, we were met by two AMA Waterways representatives, who assisted us with our luggage and took us to our hotel, were we will be staying for 3 nights. We met two other couples, Dave and Sandy from Texas, and Joe and Jean from California, who were on our flight down from London, and also on our AMA Waterways cruise and tour.

The drive to the hotel took around 35 minutes, and traffic wasn’t bad at the 10:30am hour on Friday morning. We left Orlando Wednesday evening, connecting in Miami and London. And now we were finally here in Cape Town – really exciting!

The five star Cape Grace Hotel is simply outstanding. The location is terrific; it’s on the waterfront overlooking the marina, and is a short and safe walking distance to the market square area with a modern shopping mall and loads of restaurants.

Our checkin at the Cape Grace was a comfortable one; you are seated in the lobby and served coffee, juice, or water while a host or hostess brings the required paperwork and completes the formalities (i.e. passport for ID, credit card for payment etc), while waiting for our room. As it was shortly after 11am, our room wasn’t immediately ready, so we got to know our new friends in the lobby during the short wait.

Once our room was ready, we were escorted to our room, 218, by our host, who enthusiastically informed us of the hotel facilities, many of which we didn’t have an opportunity to use during our stay.

Here are some photos of the room, with views of the marina and Table Mountain, which we would later take a cable car up too. The room was quite large, and elegantly furnished. We really enjoyed the french balcony which opens up to allow fresh air and views of the marina.

Instead of showering and taking a nap right away (we were actually pretty refreshed even coming from the 12 hour flight), so we walked into the nearby market area for lunch. The market area is modern, safe, and lively, reminding us somewhat of the Boardwalk area at Disneyworld, with it’s scores of restaurants, shops, waterfront location, and even a large ferris wheel.

We had our first lunch in Cape Town at the Four Quays, an indoor/outdoor casual restaurant Jimmy Buffet would be proud of. It was a casual hang out and enjoy the view type of place, and we had great food and service; burgers and I even had a brewski. It was a nice welcome meal to South Africa, and it sure beat McDonald’s! LOL!

We later walked around the mall area, and found a pharmacy where we bought some face masks, as Jean had suggested we do due to dust on the upcoming safari. She had a friend who had just taken this same itinerary, and said it could could get quite dusty, so that was a good tip for us.

Back at the hotel, we showered and took a short nap before our 6:30pm Welcome Reception at the hotel. Here we met the rest of our fellow travelers, and with the free flowing wine, it met for some fast friends with all! Here we met our Tour Director, Delia who would be escorting us on the tour up until the Johannesburg portion of our trip. She had a delightful accent, and provided us a quick overview of the trip, including some safety tips; one of which was to lock our luggage when flying and put items of value in the in-room safe.

We had a really fun first night in Cape Town meeting our fellow tour-mates, and DOS and I were among the last people to leave the reception party.

Many people were tired from the trip and turned in for the night at that point, but DOS and I went out for a bite to eat, again walking over to the market area.

Our first dinner in Cape Town was steak and fries, served along with a South African Cabernet. While we enjoy red wine, neither of us knows anything about South African wines, (which we later would find out numbers over 300 wineries), so we just picked a decently prices (actually very reasonably priced) bottle and enjoyed it with our meal.