My very first day in South Africa, since there was the whole bankrupt airline disaster, was actually spent in Johannesburg. Roxanne took me to this giant flea market behind the mall, which was filled with all sorts of fun odds and ends.
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| It was HUGE! |
There were also a ton of food vendors, and while we had a tough time deciding where to get lunch, we ended up getting Indian food.
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| I was very tempted to get this paella...kind of regret not getting it. |
I also bought Roxanne a birthday present there (two shot glasses with a mini bottle of South African liqueur). There was also an antiques section, which was pretty cool, and I ended up buying my sister a gift there as well! Just in case she's reading this, I'm not going to say what it is. Anyway, so our day was mostly spent there; once we finished browsing we went back to Roxanne's house and I kind of passed out on her bed because I was so tired from so much traveling. Then that night we flew to Cape Town.
When we got back from Cape Town, it was Thursday and I wasn't leaving for Europe until Saturday, so we had a couple days to kill. On Friday, we walked to the Chinatown in Johannesburg, which took about an hour, and half of it was uphill, which Roxanne failed to tell me. Yeah. But it turned out that the Chinatown there is pretty legit! I got to eat some spicy cold noodles (liang mian), which were soooo good. The restaurant we ate at was also a Sichuanese restaurant, which was awesome, since my family is from Sichuan!
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| Deeeeelicious! |
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| The restaurant! It's called Cheng Du Xiao Chi |
I've been in a Chinese food withdrawal ever since I got to Europe, so I was very glad we went. We also got desserts and bubble tea afterwards...leading to SUCH a food coma, and feeling like we were about to burst. So it was actually a good thing that it was an hour-long walk back...anyway, that night we ended up going out to a couple bars (and had pizza for dinner at one), which were pretty crowded, but nothing that exciting happened. What's funny is that the two bars were called Jolly Roger and Jolly Cool, haha. No relation though! Totally separate businesses. The thing about Johannesburg is, though, that EVERYTHING is ridiculously far away, so her co-workers had to drive us there...and we had to take a cab back. Yeah.
The next day, we had lunch at a popular (and rather nice) restaurant called Moyo, which served traditional South African food, which I had never tried before! We had springbok shank, pap (a kind of corn mush), and this other thing called nhopi dovi which is another kind of mush that's pumpkin with groundnut sauce. It basically tastes like pumpkin-flavored peanut butter. I know it sounds weird, but it is SO FREAKING GOOD. Yeah. We also got two free drinks because they were testing out a new candy-flavored vodka they were planning to introduce soon. So that was cool, haha.
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| Our meal! The orange stuff is nhopi dovi and the beige one is pap. |
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| Modeling one of our free drinks |
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| My dessert! Baklava of some kind... |
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| Roxanne's dessert, forgot what it was called lol |
After lunch we walked around the mall that the restaurant was in, and then went back. Then I packed and started making a birthday cake for Roxanne, but we discovered that my flight actually left an hour earlier than we thought, so we had to book it to the airport. I said my goodbyes to Roxanne, very sad to leave, but not TOO sad because...she is visiting me in France from the 17th to the 21st!!!!! YAYYYYY!!!!
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