Best weekend in CT

So this past Saturday was Diwali, and as many of you know it is my favorite festival. My mom decorates our house beautifully and we always enjoy lighting a ton of diya’s and putting up lights (that conveniently stay on the hedges until Christmas). Thus, I’ll admit I was sad to be missing all the festivities at home and afraid that my weekend would be quite depressing because of this. But I’m happy to say that I was completely wrong. This entire weekend, but particular Saturday, I was filled with that bubbly excitement and general sense of contentment. I have my housemates to thank for that because once I explain that “Diwali is my jam” and that it is similar to Christmas in importance to me, everyone seemed to understand where I was coming from.

Since a number of people here haven’t had Indian food before, or wanted to have it again, we decided to go to an Indian restaurant named Vintage for dinner after class on Friday night. We were on time for our 6:30 reservations even though, of course, the restaurant was almost empty. IST is a global phenomenon. It was a 3-hour affair, and we were all completely stuffed after finishing- this is why their sofa seating was so cushiony, so that you can lie back and reprimand yourself for eating so much. The menu was seriously set-up like an excel spreadsheet with columns and rows. Each row was the type of curry, and each column was what you wanted in the curry (vegetarian, paneer, chicken, lamb etc.) It was really stressful trying to choose a dish because I hadn’t heard of half the curries before. I obviously failed at being the go-to Indian food expert.




Because of the high need for laziness after eating so much, we lounged around the house for about 2 hours before some of us finally decided to go out to a bar named Cubana (chosen because it was recommended by locals as well as it being only a 10 min cab ride from here). It was an interesting set-up where people were sitting at tables eating food, others were smoking hookah’s, and then there was a kind-of dance floor in front of the bar area. If people liked a song playing they would get up from their table and do some basic moves in their little spot, it was quite entertaining. There was a guy that had a Canadian flag on his shirt.

At 8 a.m Saturday morning Diana comes into my room saying that Bryan, a driver with KwikCab, was here to see me. The night before I had asked Bryan about going to the Shri Siva Aalayam temple in the Rylands for Diwali- he didn’t know where it was and said he would call me before 8 a.m to tell me costs. He tried calling my phone but it had died so instead he came to the manor to tell me how much it would be- Kwik Cab is so nice to us. We know all the drivers (there are only 4) and they are probably highly entertained by us foolish Americans and our crazy antics. Since they have 24-hour shifts they will see us quite often since we have to cab quite a lot. We also try to fit 10-12 people into their van, which is always an interesting time (also a constant reminder of driving in India, but we can’t sit in the trunk here).
Anyways, despite the high cost of the cab Mollie, Anne-Marie and Diana decided they would accompany me to the temple. It was quite a journey to the Temple because we didn’t really know where we were going and had to ask for directions a few times, and realized while we were there that the Rylands are the second most dangerous township in Cape Town. Yup. Anyways, we ended up arriving because a man was really nice and showed us the way and I am so glad we went. It was cool to see the set-up and just to be around other people celebrating Diwali. Everyone at the temple was really nice to us (I would say I’m 99% sure it is because I was with 3 white Americans…we may have stuck out a little). A 10 year old girl asked for my number. We got a plate-full of Prasad too, which was great, but it seemed that no one else really got any. We stayed for about 45 minutes (there were some bhajans) and then left to go to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens.





It was a beautiful day to be at the gardens and lovely to walk around. We picked up Scooter’s pizza on the way (SO good) and had a little picnic.


Scooters Honey Mustard Pizza- sounds gross, yet so delicious.


With a stone sculpture


Peas in a Pod...this is just hilarious

Once we left the gardens a few of us went to watch Adam, the movie ($3! Whoo!) at the Labia movie theatres (no, I am not joking.) We were all really tired and thus ended up spending the night just hanging out in our room and tried for 3 hours to get Love Actually to work on someone’s laptop and project it onto our room wall. This was an utter failure- I would even say an epic failure- and we ended up putting on Good Will Hunting- during which everyone fell asleep in our room. One great thing about living in the “hang out” room is that you always get bed space.

Sunday most of us went to the Camps Bay Beach and sat there for about 4.5 hours. It was quite windy but still such great weather, and of course being near water is always a pleasurable experience.

All in all, one of my favorite weekends spent in Cape Town so far.