Our first stop as digital nomads is Cape Town, South Africa! We arrived on a Tuesday afternoon and settled into Anchor Bay Guest House.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were mainly work days. We slept in, walked around our Sea Point and Green Point neighborhoods in the morning, ate lunch, and then worked in the afternoon and evening.

On Wednesday Katie spent the afternoon buying a few essential items since her checked bag had still not made its way to Cape Town (it finally showed up unannounced on Thursday afternoon). She ended up getting a warm soft shell jacket from Cape Union Mart and a shirt from Nike.

On Thursday we considered whether to switch lodging for our final four nights in Cape Town (since we’d only booked through Friday morning at Anchor Bay Guest House). We loved everything about the guest house except the wifi – which was slow during the day but terrible/unusable at night. In hindsight we should have moved, but we opted to move to the ‘Owl’ room on a Citi Prestige 4th night free booking. The wifi continued to be unusable at worst and terrible at best, which was a constant frustration.

Saturday we took the CitySightseeing Cape Point Explorer for a day trip to the southwestern Cape. Since we took so many pictures while exploring the southwestern Cape, we wrote a post just about this day.

Once back in Cape Town, we wandered the V&A Waterfront (where the bus had dropped us).

Once the sun set, we walked to Alexander Bar. We’d meet the owners on our forced overnight in Addis Ababa, so we wanted to visit.

The bar was busy when we arrived, but we were able to snag a two seat table by the entrance to the upstairs theater. There were many interesting drinks, but Katie opted for a Passionata (passion fruit and MEC sparkling wine) and JT went for the house special: an Alexander Cooler (vodka, triple Sec, amaretto, cranberry juice). We also ordered dinner: lasagna for JT and a chicken burger for Katie. Both were excellent!

Sunday we slept in some before taking the 11:47am Northern Line train from Cape Town station to Stellenbosch. Many people – tour guides on the Cape Point Explorer, our Uber driver to the train station, and some people on various Internet forums – had advised against the train for ‘safety’ reasons. However, multiple Cape Town locals on these Internet forums also said it was perfectly safe. We found this to be the case – although it was a glimpse into the 3rd world side of Cape Town. We had bought 1st class tickets for the 75 minute ride for 19 Rand ($1.43) each, but opted to not sit in the one empty foul-smelling first class train wagon. Instead we chose a wagon with various other passengers about half-way down the surprisingly long train.

Once we reached Stellenbosch, we walked to Hudson’s (a burger cafe we had found using Google Maps). Katie ordered an Oreo shake, chicken tender appetizer, and fries while JT ordered a flat white coffee, ostrich burger, and smothered fries. Everything was excellent, albeit a bit expensive at 330 rand ($24.90)!

We took an Uber to Lanzerac Wine Estates, a pit stop in season 2 of The Amazing Race.

We each ordered 5 wine samples as part of their 70 Rand per person ‘Premier Sampling’. Each of the wines we chose was excellent, and we were surprised that all of the wines were being sold for less than $11 each. We didn’t buy any bottles though since we’re heading to Japan soon and Anchor Bay Guest House provides wine for free.

We took an Uber back to Cape Town since it seemed there were no more trains back to Cape Town after the 3:34pm train. After becoming frustrated with Anchor Bay Guest House wifi once again, we opted to go sit, work, drink, and eat at Alexander Bar until they closed at midnight.

Monday was out last full day in Cape Town. We went for a walk in Green Point Park in the morning, spent the afternoon working, and went to Alexander Bar one last time in the evening to meet up with one of JT’s Twitter followers. We ended up closing out the bar once more as we enjoyed talking with our new friends.

Tuesday morning we woke at 9:30am and JT went to go get our laundry from Econ-O-Wash in Sea Point. It was finished when he arrived around 10:15am despite it being scheduled for pickup at ‘10 or 11’.

We sorted and packed the clothing. Although everything was there, we were upset to find that many of our items had shrunk – likely due to high heat drying.  This left JT to travel in pants that were now (noticeably) too tight.