Day 62: The World of Birds (plus Monkeys, Meerkats, Alpacas, Reptiles and more!) — High Tea at the Mount Nelson Hotel

[Note: The internet is very slow at our Cape Town house, making photo uploads slow or impossible. We’ll come back to these posts and add pictures.]

We woke up surprised that the wind hadn’t ripped our house off the foundations and deposited it in the Indian Ocean. We had heard it gets windy here but had no idea until last night. Holy moly.

The wind blew in a clear blue sky day but it was still very breezy. We decided to skip home schooling, believing that a “field trip” to the House of Birds would fulfill our requirements for the day.

On the way there we stopped by Llandundo, a fancy residential hood that Tim Smith pointed out to us on Tuesday. We were driving by so we spun through, ending up at the bottom of the hill by a beautiful, breezy beach with a great surf break. Kids ran around for a bit and played with the kelp that had washed up on the beach.

We eventually made it to the World of Birds and it turned out to be a fun and interesting place. This “bird sanctuary” also houses reptiles, monkeys, meerkats, alpacas, miniature goats and various other creatures. It wasn’t crowded so we got up close to enclosures. Kids loved it.

We had made a reservation for afternoon tea at the fancy Mount Nelson hotel here in our neighborhood. It’s about a 15 min walk down the hill from our house to the lush hotel grounds. So fancy it actually feels out of place. Thankfully we’ve been “practicing” our tea parties with Grammie back in DC so the kids were on point. In fact a British woman from the table next to us stopped by to say that she was impressed by how well behaved the kids were. Score one for Grammie!

Luckily we decided not to have lunch before tea because there was a ton of food: hot and cold finger foods (mushroom empanadas won the day); a scone course with strawberry jam, clotted cream, butter and whipped cream (!!); and then a trip to the dessert table. It was a special afternoon. I’m sure we’ll return when we’re back in Cape Town with my mom the first week in April.