News

If you have chosen to stay in our accommodation in Cape Town during your visit to the Mother City then you may very well have traveled past the Grand Parade at one point or another, like many of our Cape Town accommodation, it is situated right in the city center, in the heart of all of the activity.

The Grand Parade was first officially used by the Castle of Good Hope’s garrison, as a training ground. At the time it was a grassy common. Later it was used as an area on which to conduct military parades, which is possibly where its name originated from. It has been used as a market since 1710 and while this use continues today, it is also employed for other significant events.

Guests of our Cape Town holiday accommodation may recall that it was filled with 25000 people in 1990 when this large crowd gathered to see and hear nelson Mandela at the City Hall across the road from the Grand Parade, directly after his release from prison. Equally large crowds gathered again in 1994 when the ANC were voted to rule after South Africa’s first free and fair elections.

The Grand Parade had a facelift in the form of a R24 million upgrade in time for the 2010 Fifa World Cup. These upgrades were necessary and saw a 25000 strong crowd converge again on the Grand Parade to watch the 64 live soccer matches of the World Cup.

To this day the Grand Parade is used as a market place, but only twice a week every Wednesday and Saturday. Here guests of our accomodation in Cape Town can haggle with the vendors for fabric, clothes, flowers and various other goods. But guests of our accommodation Cape Town should be aware of pickpockets in this area.

The Parliament of South Africa will be opening this year on the 9^th of February where the President will give his annual State of the Nation Address and where politicians and dignitaries will consider more than 20 bills for this year.

While not everyone is invited inside the houses of Parliament for the State of the Nation Address, it is well worth departing from your Cape villas for a few hours and heading down to Plein Street to see what everyone is wearing. No matter how colourful or stylish, every outfit is bound to be a political if not fashion statement in its own right. Of course as a guest of one of our Cape Town villas, you are likely to stay in and watch the address from the comfort of your own Cape Town villa, which is no surprise as all as all of our Cape Town apartments are well equipped with excellent audio and visual equipment for you to enjoy the annual event.

So settle in to the plush furniture of your villa rental Cape Town and find out what is in store for our country this year as the various bills are discussed, including the much talked about Protection of Information Bill.

If you do decide to leave the comfort of your Cape Town luxury villas for one day and head down to Plein Street in the city center, near many of our luxury villas Cape Town, then be sure to take note of City Hall just around the corner from Plein. City Hall is the destination of many of the protest marches of the past. Some more local history lies just around the corner from Plein Street in the form of the Slave Lodge, on the corner of Adderley Street, this museum commemorates the slaves that were bought and sold on this spot.

Jetty Square is situated alongside Piers Place, the square just next to Adderley Street that is littered with life sized bronze statues, ensuring that you won’t feel alone while sitting on a bench in this area.

Jetty Square is just behind Piers Place, while a public area, it is a bit more hidden away from the activity of any main streets and is surrounded by popular restaurants and coffee shops, such as Bizerka. The perfect place for business people to escape the hustle and bustle of the city temporarily, one could easily walk from their Cape Town Waterfront accommodation, and it shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes by foot.

If you are planning on finding some public art to appreciate during your stay at one of our Cape Town Waterfront apartments, then this is the place for you, as it is home to the Ghost Shark sculptures by Ralph Borland.

These mild steel sculptures of the basic outlines of sharks’ skeletons are not as scary as they sound. They are each perched 3 meters above the ground atop a pole, and reference the fact that Jetty Square forms part of the area where the sea was reclaimed by the land, when you walk along Jetty Square bare in mind that you are walking where sharks once swam. Perhaps the sculptures also reference the sharks of the business world. The spooky aspect of the sculptures is that they have infrared sensors in their noses and sense when someone walks below them, causing them to swivel.

Guests of our Waterfront accommodation will find that when the wind blows the sharks will sing through flutes built into their gills. The sharks also behave like weathervanes, pointing in the direction of the wind.

So when you are next out exploring the city by foot, if you can tear yourself away from the luxuries of the Cape Town Waterfront and our apartments equal to any 5 star hotels, be sure to stop in at Jetty Square to experience the treasure of the Ghost Shark sculptures in person.