One of the best destinations: Cape Town

Hello everyone!

I just got back from my second Cape Town trip so I am gonna summarize my experiences. I have always wanted to visit this city but I haven’t bid for the flight. Both times I got it by chance which was a nice surprise. We have three daily flights to Cape Town and I operated the one with the most challenging timing. The departure is 03:50 in the morning which means the crew need to check in at 01:50. I have had some other flights with the similar timing and I have never been able to sleep before. Imagine, you wake up in the morning, let’s say 9 o’clock. You can go to gym, you can try to make yourself tired, you can do whatever you want, it is extremely hard to sleep again on the same day. I always spend like 5-6 hours in my bed without the success of sleeping.

Most South African flights have two class configuration which means a very long economy cabin and lots of passengers. I don’t like these flights at all, even if there is two extra crew members, I find it much more tiring and the boarding can take forever, specially if it’s a full flight like the one I did recently. You don’t even start the flight (so basically we don’t get paid for boarding) but you already meet some challenges. People want to sit somewhere else, next to their friends, they have huge bags but there is no more space and so on. Dealing with all of these is not a big fun at 04:00 am. We had a big group of 70 French people with the complete lack of English, it was very difficult to deal with them. We even have a new service sequence, we do tea + coffee by hand after the meal service and before the clearance, at least this one made things easier. We had 1 hour 20 minutes long seat rest and after that we did the hot breakfast service. It was so intense, it completely made me awake. We got into the hotel around 01:00 pm and I met two other girls in the lobby 45 minutes later. I checked the tours at the reception and they just informed me that the one I really wanted to do (Cape of Good Hope) just left 10 minutes before. They tried to call them back but they didn’t come back for me :(. Last time I saw Table Mountain and I really wanted to see something new this time. Eventually we took the city sightseeing bus with the other girls and we went to the Botanical Garden. It was a lovely, warm weather in Cape Town, last time I was there (in mid July) it was still pretty cold.

I love this cosy room

One of the girls took selfie at every corner and we also had to take many photos of her which was a bit tiring. After 27 hours being awake this is something I don’t really have patience for. After 45 minutes we got back on the bus and did the rest of the mini peninsula tour which goes around the Table Mountain. It was a very long drive, longer than we expected but the landscape was so beautiful so I didn’t mind. When we reached Hout Bay, the typical fishy sea smell  hit me and made me love this place even better. This place had a very special atmosphere. The sea itself was not too picturesque, but the life of the port seemed very alive and vivid. This area didn’t seem to be fancy or rich bit this is exactly what gave it the charm. I wish I had more time, I would have got off the bus to have a nice seafood lunch there. We continued our way on Victoria Ave to Camps Bay which was the most fancy neighborhood I have ever seen. All the coffee shops and bars, all the hotels facing the sea looked very posh and modern. I felt myself like in a movie or something, it was very impressive. I expected to see Leonardo DiCaprio at any time :D.
I am not a party girl but this area made me wanna stay there and pretend to be rich and glamorous, haha. We headed to Clifton which was still a very nice area although not that much fancy. And guess what, we saw a whale from the bus! It was a bit far and I didn’t see the fins or the tail (just something big moving in the water) so I didn’t get too excited but it is still a nice experience. The last months are all about whales for me :D.

Our final destination was the Victoria & Albert Waterfront which is a big and busy port with many restaurants and shopping centre. I had lunch with one of the girls (the other one decided to go solo) then we went for some shopping. I wanted to buy facial oil and foundation but apparently I was too exhausted, I bought the wrong products. Luckily the oil (Blue orchid instead of Lotus) as great as the other one and the foundation shade (Ivory nude instead of Ecru) is a bit lighter but still matches with my skin tone. So eventually it was not a wasted money :). I went to the bed at 10pm and had a long, lovely sleeping until 9 in the morning. I ordered room breakfast, which was lovely just like the previous time.

I expected to have a nice and easy flight back to Dubai. We had 3 class configuration with only 230 passengers, so I was very optimistic. During the boarding I realized it is not gonna be as good as I thought for a certain reason. We had more than 90 special meals to deliver before the actual service and it was very difficult to find everybody because many people changed their seats without informing the crew. People were  pressing the call bell non stop, we had to serve lots of alcohol, we almost tun out of whiskey. This time we had crew rest compartment, so the break was 3,5 hours long. It was so good to lay down, I still remember the good sleep I had on the Auckland Dubai flight. I was watching a movie (The Shallows with Blake Lively)  before I had some actual rest. We landed 12:30 am in Dubai, completely exhausted. On the next day (which was the day before yesterday) I was sleeping until 12:30 pm, I was sooo tired, couldn’t get out of bed.

Cape Town as a destination is beautiful and very nice, but the flight itself is very tiring and demanding. To be honest, I don’t really wanna do it again :(. If I ever get it, I will try to swap it for something else. On the other hand, I love this place and there is still a lot of things I haven’t seen. So here is my plan: I have to go back to Cape Town for holiday! I have already checked some accommodation on Caps Bay and I found some very nice ones with a very good price. Going back there is a must for me, as I wanna complete something from my bucket list; cage diving with the Great White Shark! You can do the same on the Durban layover however those sharks are small :(. So they don’t make me excited at all. Hopefully I can make this holiday in a few month :).

IMPORTANT NOTE: MY POSTS ARE MY PERSONAL VIEWS. THEY DO NOT REPRESENT THE VIEWS OF MY COMPANY.

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Ps.: I officially start my reserve month tomorrow! Wish me luck to get some nice flights and not only turnarounds and days off!

Dorottya