Our Cape Town Cottage

Here are some pictures of our cottage in Cape Town.  Address: 5 Stanley Road, Rondebosch, Cape Town 7700 SOUTH AFRICA.  Check it out on Google Maps.  Notice the UCT campus on the left-hand side of the map.

Here is our living room on our first morning in South Africa.  Still in our PJs at noon.  The furnishing are nice, if not a bit out-of-date, and poorly arranged, prompting Diana to rearrange the entire place.

A picture of the front door.  Gotta love the giant lion's head on the door!

Here is our entry way with the 4 gates to get in.  Not shown is the gate between the carport and the road.

Here is a picture up Stanley Road towards the university with Devil's Peak in the background.  Pretty amazing sight every morning.  Also a vigorous walk up the hill.  Building up those calf muscles :)

Here are some guinea-hens or pea-hens that roam the neighborhood.  Here they are in the park-area across the street from our cottage.

Here is a picture of Aaron hanging out on the living room floor.  Notice the space heater behind him.  The cottage has no central heat (or central air) and gets pretty cold at night, necessitating the heaters.

The Trip to Cape Town

We have arrived in Cape Town!  Here are some pictures from the 3-day trip.  Check out more pics on Facebook.

Our flight from Houston to Amsterdam went well.  Here we are ready to go!  There are a few perks to having a baby, like early boarding!

Aaron also got his own little bassinet to sleep in.  He wasn't crazy about it, mainly because he was almost too big for it, but did get quite a bit of sleep, unlike Mom and Dad who struggled to get comfortable.

We arrived in Amsterdam at 9 am local time (2 am Houston time) and were a bit groggy, but made it through customs fine (Aaron got his first passport stamp) and had to go to Odd-size baggage to pick up our stroller.  Diana particularly liked how the Dutch say Odd-size baggage :)  Good luck with the pronunciation.

We were able to stay with our friends the Parkers (missionaries in Amsterdam).  Here is Ashlie with Annabelle and Elijah at their front door.  They have a great three-story apartment west of downtown Amsterdam.  Check out their blog at: theparkersadventures.blogspot.com

Being good Dutch, we went for a bike ride.  They have these amazing bike with boxes on them (you can't really see the bike in this picture).  But it was great for Aaron who was strapped into a little seat and covered from the wind.  According to Chad, there are more bikes than people in the Netherlands.  The Parkers represented by having 8 bikes between the 5 of them!

I had the honor of driving Annabelle around with her doll, which she never dropped.

Chad had the other two kids, Elijah on front and Whit on the back.  Diana had it easy and was riding a bike by herself.  Of course, she did ride the box bike back from dinner, which looked like a lot of work.

We eventually got to our destination (after a few wrong turns), which was a Mexican restaurant.  The food was actually pretty good (for Dutch Mexican burritos).  No pictures of the food, but here is Annabelle and Whit loving on Aaron at the restaurant.

After a good night sleep in Amsterdam, we were back to the airport and back on the plane.  As you can see, Aaron is ready to go!  After breezing through luggage check-in in Houston, we were a bit worried about having to recheck our luggage in Amsterdam.  The lady at the counter was very nice, but strictly adhered to the 23 kg limit, forcing us to shift a few things into our carry-ons, but the real problem arose when she told we were not allowed to bring a stroller, a pack-n-play and a car-seat for Aaron.  After 30 minutes of discussion in Dutch with all of the nearby check-in attendants, the rules magically changed and everything was okay.

The 11.5 hour flight to Cape Town was long, but manageable.  Our plan was to stay awake the whole flight because it was daylight the whole way.  We left at 10:30 am and landed at 10 pm in the same time zone.  It gave us a chance to get caught up on the latest movies we had missed like Nanny McPhee 2, Ironman 2 and How to Train a Dragon.  All good movies.  Aaron, of course, slept and was the center of attention.  Once we landed and cleared customs, UCT spent a driver to pick us up.  Of course, had it get a picture of that.