Max and I decided to wrap up our Cape Town adventure with a little hike up Table Mountain… how hard could that be, right? … I mean, it doesn’t look that challenging from our balcony.
Well, it turns out if you are a middle-age man of middling condition, the answer is “really fucking hard!” But the payoff — in terms of scenery and views from the top — was amazing!
Do NOT climb India Venster trail! My Cape Town friends suggested we climb a route called Platteklip Gorge… a relatively “easy” hike that would take “about an hour or an hour and a half” (we were told). Another person suggested we climb the “India Venster” route… “a little more challenging, but totally doable.” (That, we found out, was more than a little white lie). Thankfully, an extremely helpful person at the base of Table Mountain (where people take the funicular to the top, when it is working) suggested we avoid India Venster and instead take the Platteklip Gorge route, as people who hike/climb India Venster quite often have to be rescued — just this past Monday, a guy had a heart attack and needed to be evacuated by helicopter (we happened to be there that day and saw the helicopter doing that).
Platteklip it is… So Max and I took Platteklip Gorge route to reach the summit of Table Mountain (just shy of 3600 feet), which was plenty demanding for me. One website I subsequently viewed described the Platteklip route as a “relentlessly steep path” that is “nothing but up, up, up!” That was my experience ,… though I would add it is an extremely scenic route. Here are quite a few photos from that journey:
The payoff!
I may have had days where the number of steps and distance were greater, but not the combination of difficulty and number of the steps:
I wish my watch had an elevations setting 
Max, on way to airport following hike
On to Paris! After our very long day of hiking, we had a very long (12 hour) overnight flight from Cape Town to Paris. After checking in to our Airbnb (a lovely, yet cozy) apartment, Zoe and I ditched Max and Jackie to go on a bit of a walkabout — the Louvre, Tuileries and Seine are all within minutes of our flat — before we all went out to a nearby cafe for dinner.
We love you too, Paris!
Bastille Day Reunion! Friends of ours from Indy — the Osburn-Bopps — have joined us for the Paris and Barcelona legs of our adventure. They arrived today, which happens to be Bastille Day! After a few hugs, a little catching up, and dropping off their bags at our apartment, we set out to see some Bastille Day festivities. We didn’t get close enough to the Champs Elysees to see the military parade, but we did get there just in time to see the military planes fly over, which was pretty cool.
First, the reunion…
Then the parade!
We also walked through the Latin Quarter to the Luxembourg Gardens, Medici Fountain and the Pantheon (where Foucault famously displayed his pendulum, and where a version of it still resides).
Pantheon & Foucault’s Pendulum 
We will be in Paris for the next several days… While I do not expect to post daily, I am sure there will be much more of Paris about which to blog in the coming days.
