Best Last Day in Africa

We thought maybe we'd have an easy relaxing day to prepare for the 11 hour overnight to Amsterdam. Then we called Steve Carver's partner David Germond, and that was the end of any feeble plans. Instead we had the best possible tour of this amazing city .
We started at the beautiful and somewhat funky home of David, Michelle, Jared and Daniella. Built as a worker's cottage by Italian POW's in WWII, featuring several dogs, the oldest upright piano in Africa, a retired famous ballerina living in a room built in the backyard - that kind of place! It's in a downtown neighborhood that's definitely more racially mixed and less of a fortress mentality than where our B&B was. Still security fences around the houses, but not so many huge faceless walls, and at least one house with hardly a fence at all. The shops are in clusters on streets rather than in malls - Cabbagetown vs Mississauga.
Like so many people we've met, they wanted to show us the best of South Africa, and did a fabulous job of it - very warm, fun lovely tour guides. We went around Newtown, and other core areas that you might avoid as a tourist without benefit of enthusiastic locals. Yes, there were lots of decayed buildings, and some unsavory people, but also lots of evidence of renewal, and a throbbing vitality despite the gloomy weather. A bit like Toronto, there's a deep ethnic mix, and little areas that are Malay, or Muslim, or Nigerian. Way less white people than Toronto, though - a lot of suburban whites are far less comfortable here than David and Michelle, who went to school downtown and revel in its character.
We had samoosas (they pronounce the extra o) in the 'Asian Bazarre', an area of little shops where you can buy anything, cheap, like wildly gaudy wedding wear, car parts, or giant pots that could cook a curry for fifty. Visited the Museum of Africa and an excellent ceramics show, walked and drove for fascinating blocks without incident, and then on to Soweto, in the next blog posting. What a great sendoff, seeing an insider's view of one of Africa's great cities!
(By the way, I'm posting this a world away from Africa, in Amsterdam, where we've arrived and are staying with family friend Connie Steenman - more later...)(Also, the burned-out trains in one photo below are not the norm! They were burned during clashes in a rail workers strike.)