The Green Room Gardens is now listed on AirBnB

I have recently moved my listing to AirBnb and couldn't be happier with the site. From now on all my bookings will go through AirBnb to keep things sweet and simple.

I have added more descriptions and photos to the listing and have even dropped the price a bit. The idea is to focus more on medium term rentals from now on - from 3 weeks to several months, so the apartment is very competitively priced for that category. In my opinion rates for short and medium term furnished lets in Cape Town is way overpriced, especially considering the huge supply at the moment - so I am trying to address this issue by making my rates a lot more affordable than what anyone else is offering.

In other good news, the Gardens Centre apartments tower block now has Wi-Fi, with routers on every floor, so the reception is really good. Access can be rented from the Gardens Holiday Apartments reception desk at the entrance to the tower block. Rates are R20 for 200MB, R50 for 500MB, R70 for 1GB, R140 for 2GB, etc.

More good news is that the Gardens MyCiti Bus station, located under the bridge across the road from the Gardens Centre, is now open, and Myconnect cards and top-ups can be purchased directly from here. Hopefully the Vredehoek line will start operating soon, but for now you can still take a bus to the Civic Centre Station from here and from there transfer to the Waterfront, Airport, Table View and Salt River lines.

Flood lights on Table Mountain

The City of Cape Town municipality sometimes turns on bright, coloured flood lights at night that light up Table Mountain. Nowadays it is only done on special occasions to conserve energy, but when I was a child the lights used to be turned on almost every night, if I remember correctly.

A while ago I happened to be in the Green Room Gardens apartment when the lights were on, and I was ready with camera in hand to commit it to photographic memory. The cloudy sky made the scene all the more spectacular.

Cape Town Carnival 2012

This year's Cape Town Carnival will be held tomorrow, 24 March 2012 on the Fan Walk from 5pm - one of the 2010 World Cup Soccer's most successful pre-match venues. Last year's carnival was held in Long Street and was a real blast, and this year's promises to be even bigger and better.


The theme for this year's parade is Cape to Cairo – a journey through Africa and its people, and it will feature 2 000 costumed performers in 11 themed floats, nine richly decorated giant floats and 11 academies with 150 community dancers.

It will be preceded by a concert at the Cape Town Stadium at 17:00. After the parade, a DJ will entertain the crowds near the Green Point traffic circle until midnight.

MyCiTi bus service now running from right outside the Gardens Centre!

It's been a long wait, but the MyCiTi bus service is now running from right outside the Gardens Centre (where the Green Room Gardens Apartment is located) to the V&A Waterfront via Long and Loop Streets, the Convention Centre (where you can catch the airport bus) and Green Point (where the Cape Town Stadium is).

The buses run from 6am to 8pm on weekdays, 7am to 8pm on Saturdays and 8am and 8pm on Sundays and public holidays, and run every 10 minutes during peak hours and every 20 minutes during off-peak hours. Tickets are available on board or at station kiosks, and cost only R5! You can also connect to a Table View bus at the Civic Centre for only R10.

Click here for a route map.

Important update: Tickets can no longer be bought on the buses! You have to buy a myconnect card at a MyCiTi kiosk (the one at the Civic Centre is closest to the Green Room apartment), or alternatively at Oxford Books inside the Gardens Centre (most convenient but with added charges). The card, which costs R22, works like a debit card onto which you can load up to R1500 at a time. The card is then swiped on the bus and the fare deducted. Apart from the MyCiTi bus service, the card can also be used for small transactions of up to R200 at retailers such as Pick 'n Pay, Spar, coffee shops, etc. 

Cape Town Named Top Travel Destination on Tripadvisor!

Cape Town has recently been named the NUMBER ONE travel destination in Tripadvisor's Traveller's Choice 2011 Destinations Awards. The list puts Cape Town ahead of Sydney, Machu Picchu, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, New York and other top travel destinations around the world. The awards are based on millions of unbiased opinions from TripAdvisor travellers and were determined based on a combination of travellers' favourite places and overall destination popularity.

(Image by Jorge-11)

Getting to the Green Room Gardens from Cape Town International Airport

The most affordable and convenient way to get from the airport to The Green Room Gardens Self Catering Apartment is via the MyCiTi airport shuttle bus, which runs from Airport Station to the Civic Centre Station in Cape Town CBD.

When you've landed and collected your luggage at the airport, head straight for the main exit, ignoring kiosks for other, more expensive airport shuttle buses. Outside of the airport building, look for a big statue of an elephant - Airport Station is right across the airport building from where this statue is. You can buy your tickets, which cost R53 one way for adults and R26.50 for children (pay cash only - find ATMs and currency exchange inside the airport building) at the station.

The MyCiTi buses depart every 20 minutes and run from 5:10am to 9:50pm. The ride takes anything from 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the traffic. The most congested time is during morning peak hour traffic, which lasts from about 7am to 10am on week days.

The bus will stop at the Civic Centre Station, from where you can either switch buses to the Gardens bus line, or hop on a taxi to the Gardens Centre - all Cape Town taxi drivers will know where this is.

To proceed by bus: Purchase a myconnect card while at the Civic Centre Station, before getting on to the bus that goes to the Gardens Centre (this is the stop where you should get off - the Green Room Gardens Apartment is located inside the Gardens Centre). You can load any amount of money onto this card - which works like a debit card. The card can be used on any of the MyCiTi buses as well as retailers (for small transactions up to R200) - while you still have money on it. The card can be topped up again at a MyCiTi kiosk or at Oxford Books inside the Gardens Centre. A single ride from the Civic Centre to the Gardens Centre will deduct R5 from your myconnect card.

To proceed by taxi: Flag down a taxi near the Civic Centre or call a Rikki's taxi. The 2.6km ride should take about 10 minutes and cost around R35. You can ask your driver to drop you off at the Hiddingh Avenue side-entrance of the Gardens Centre, as it is closest to the entrance to the apartments tower inside the building, where we will meet you. Click here for more information on taking a taxi from the Civic Centre.

Alternatively I can pre-arrange for a Rikki's taxi to collect you from the airport and drop you off at the Gardens Centre. This should cost around R250 for the ride, with a surcharge for excess baggage.

Click here for more information on the MyCiTi airport shuttle service.

Speak up against canned lion hunting!

As a nation we South Africans take great pride in our rich biodiversity and breathtaking landscapes. Many tourists travel here to experience the abundant wildlife in the beautiful surroundings of our private and national parks. However, there is an ugly side to the wildlife industry that most tourists do not get to see, but that would probably shock them into reconsidering their decision to support South African tourism: trophy hunting for "sport".

Canned lion hunting, although controversial from the start, has grown over the past couple of years into a million dollar industry that allows wealthy overseas hunters to add a lion to their collection of exotic animal trophies for up to R250 000 per animal. These animals are bred captive specifically for this purpose and kept in confined enclosures - habituated to humans - until the day the price on their heads are claimed and they are hunted within close quarters, without any hope of escaping their already-sealed fate.

Our previous Ministry of Environment and Tourism took a hard public stance against this industry, effectively banning canned lion operations. Unfortunately the already-powerful industry lashed back with an appeal to courts, bringing the legislation to a standstill until this week, when the court ruled in favour of the South African Predator Breeders' Association.

This is a huge blow to the lions and the South African public, the vast majority of whom do not support this practice. In fact, the only people who stand to gain are the ruthless, money-hungry breeders and the cowardly so-called hunters who support them. There is no gain for conservation and certainly no gain for the reputation of our beautiful country.

Please help us stamp out the unethical practice of canned lion hunting! We need to put pressure on the South African government to declare this activity illegal once and for all. Please sign this petition and forward it on to your friends.

Famous Cape Town landmark comes crashing down (no, not THAT one)

This past Sunday morning at 11:56am, a very familiar part of the Cape Town skyline was changed irrevocably when the 48-year old Athlone Cooling Towers came crashing down in a planned demolition.

Although not visible from The Green Room Gardens Self Catering Apartment, the towers were a famous landmark on the N2 Highway en route from Cape Town International Airport to the Cape Town CBD and Gardens, and were often referred to when giving directions.

Watch the video to see how it all unfolded in the blink of an eye:

Before and After (Part 2: Almost Finished)

We finally managed to finish the renovations at the apartment, almost a month after the end of the World Cup! Oh well, still in time for the summer holiday season, which is just around the corner.

Here are some pics of the renovated flat plus most of the furniture, sans decorations. As soon as I can get a hold of a camera with a wide-angle lens, I will post more pictures of the completely transformed, modern and relaxing Green Room Gardens - a far cry from the 70s-style, DIY disaster it was when I bought it.

This is the actual view!

Before and After (Part 1: Before)

Who'd have thought this scruffy-looking place (as depicted in the pictures we took before starting renovations) could ever amount to much? Especially when the work, which was supposed to take only 3 days to complete, was unnecessarily dragged out by our unscrupulous project manager to about 11 weeks in the end, completely obliterating my hopes to have it ready in time for the World Cup?

After lots of nail-biting and hair-pulling, it finally got done in the end, and although we missed the soccer crowd by about a mile, I'm certainly glad it doesn't look like this anymore:

Before Renovations 1

Before Renovations 2

Before Renovations 3

Before Renovations 4

Before Renovations 5

Before Renovations 6

Before Renovations 7