Sunshine and beautiful beaches! Gotta love the Garden Route…
During our trip home to South Africa, we visited Cape Town to attend Richard’s sister’s wedding.
The venue was at The Range in Tokai which is right next to the Constantia Uitsig farm. Between the lovely stone chapel and the log cabin reception, it was a very beautiful location!
Since there are so many photos, I’ve made the thumbnails a bit smaller this time. Just click on the images to see a bigger version…
Preparation and Rehearsal Day
On the Friday we met up at the venue to start setting up and have a bit of a rehearsal. Unfortunately we couldn’t get the keys for the chapel but we got stuck into the basic preparations for the venue itself.
This is the view looking out over the wine farm.
Wedding Saturday
The family photos… unfortunately I didn’t get a really good one of Ryan’s brothers though.
Congratulations Ryan and Karen! It was a beautiful wedding and sure was a great send off into married life.
To celebrate the end of another long year of studying, Richard and I went to Cambridge for the weekend.
| On Saturday we went into town quite early and were lucky enough to see the sun while we walked along the river. | |
| Over lunch time we took a guided walking tour of the colleges which was a great way to find out more of the history of the town. It reminded me a lot of Grahamstown with the house system, although this would have been Grahamstown with FAR more money and much crazier architects. Below is the front of Kings College. |
| This is the Corpus Clock at Corpus Christie College. It gets quite a lot of attention and I’m sure the locals must get frustrated at the tourists blocking the road to look at it. |
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| If you keep the clock on your left and walk along a bit, you come to the entrance of Corpus Christie College. It was closed to visitors that day so we didn’t get to see inside. | |
| This is the Mathematical Bridge by Queens’ College. We were told by the tour guides that this bridge was originally built without screws or bolts but apparently that is just a myth. You can find out more information on the Queens’ College website. So between that and the differing stories of the origins of Cambridge I must admit that I’m a bit dissapointed with the tourist information. We should have trekked around with Richard’s eee! |
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| This is Pembroke College which was got to see inside. As with most colleges, only the fellows are able to walk on the grass. So it looks immaculate! | |
| More of Pembroke College. Below is a picture of the residences. I love the way the ivy has climbed all over the buildings. I wonder if the sense of history of the buildings makes the students study harder. But then again, students are probably the same the world over… |
The photo above is from inside the Pembroke College Chapel. Each College has it’s own chapel and as a privilidge of being part of the college, you can come back years later to have your wedding in the building. What amazing venue for a wedding!
We then went along to Kings College and this is the statue in the court behind the main entrance.
And a view looking back at the main entrance.
This chapel is the most spectacular by far. This symbol is above one of the doors and it was part of the section where the cleaning of the stones had been finished. What a difference it made!
| Seeing the inside of the chapel was the highlight of the tour. I can’t describe the size of the building or the size of the stained glass windows. If you’re in Cambridge it’s definitely worth a visit! |
All in all a good weekend. Could have used less rain but it was great to get away!
Autumn is just as pretty as Spring is here. There isn’t much of a transition in Cape Town, but here the leaves on the trees turn various shades of yellow, orange and red before falling. There is one line of trees that I walk past on my way to work in the morning that has a tree of each colour. So when the sun was out yesterday I went and took this photo.
It’s been 4 months now since baby swan entered the scene in St James Park. Getting pretty big now! You can see how the feathers are starting to change color to white.
This is mom and dad swan getting angry at the geese. They look beautiful when their wings are raised like that - but they mostly do it when they’re angry. It’s amazing to watch dad swan intimidate the geese by chasing them around the pond and sometimes getting hold of one and dunking it under the water.











