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Cape Town has grown as a city in a way that few others in the world have. Take a good look at the street names. Strand and Waterkant streets (meaning "beach" and "waterside," respectively) are now far from the sea. However, when they were named, they were right on the beach. An enormous program of dumping rubble into the ocean extended the city by a good few square miles (thanks to the Dutch obsession with reclaiming land from the sea). Almost all the city on the seaward side of Strand and Waterkant is part of the reclaimed area of the city known as the Foreshore. If you look at old paintings of the city, you will see that originally waves lapped at the very walls of the castle, now more than half a mile from the ocean.
Experience real Cape Town local life every Thursday from 5 to 8 in this rented church hall space. With fresh produce, a wide variety of really good food, craft beers and wines, and even clothes and jewelry on sale, this is a vibey City Bowl social gathering.
Once a military parade ground, this old public square is now a parking lot where traders (many informal) sell things like sweets, cheap sunglasses, and fish-and-chips—with a statue of Edward VII serving as a parking attendant and seagull resting post. It was here that more than 100,000 of Nelson Mandela's supporters gathered on February 11, 1990, when, after 27 years in prison, he addressed an adoring crowd from the balcony at City Hall.
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