Tag Archives: readers

Cape Town voted 2023 ‘The Greatest City on Earth’ by The Telegraph Readers

Yesterday we reported that South Africa was named by The Telegraph as the 2023 World’s Best Holiday Destination. Now it has been revealed that the UK publication has named Cape Town as The Greatest City on Earth’.

A total of about 27000 The Telegraph readers participated in the survey. The 2023 Top 10 Cities in the World are the following:

1. Cape Town

2. Venice

3. Seville

4. Vancouver

5. Rome

6. Florence

7. Rio de Janeiro

8. Sydney

9. Kyoto

10. Dubrovnik

Cape Town is described as ‘a remarkable city gleaming at the continent’s edge’. It is praised for its location at the foot of Table Mountain, its beaches, the scenery of the Cape Peninsula, and the nearby Winelands and wine regions. The favourable exchange rate, the quality restaurants and hotels, and its long summer days are further Cape Town assets.

Cape Town has topped the Greatest City in the World list in the past ten years, excluding 2020 and 2021 due to Covid.

Chris von Ulmenstein, WhaleTales Blog: www.chrisvonulmenstein.com/blog Tel +27 082 55 11 323

Twitter:@Ulmenstein

Facebook: Chris von Ulmenstein, My Cape Town Guide/Mein Kapstadt Guide

Instagram: @Chrissy_Ulmenstein @MyCapeTownGuide @campsbayclean

Corona Virus: Lockdown Journey Journal, Day 10 of Level 4, 7 July 2021

 

Wednesday 7 July 2021, Day 10 of Level 4 😷

Corona Gratitude 🙏

Grateful for a beautiful 17C day, third day in a row, before the rain hits us tomorrow; for a fabulously lucky Discovery Gameboard play, scoring 750 points on one of the two plays, giving me a Woolies voucher, a good omen for the rest of the day; for selling a SwitchBitch book tiday, thank you Gloria 🙏; for a good working day; for a walk to Pick n Pay to buy some essentials, including batteries for my alarm sensors, an expensive exercise; for a Bakoven walk; for Minsky coping well in receiving her annual vaccination, I worrying about her being traumatized by being in a cat carrier for the first time Continue reading →

WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 6-8 January

WhaleTalesTourism, Food, and Wine news headlines

*   Graham Beck Wines has been appointed as the official MCC supplier to Cape Town’s hosting of World Design Capital 2014.

*   Wine writer Sherwin Lao from the Philippines, writing the column ‘Sip by Sip‘ for the Manila Standard Today, visited the Winelands of South Africa twice in 2013, and sings its praises, describing it as ‘a marvel to look at’, having visited Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, and Elgin.  He also wrote about its ‘surreal mountain views, quaint looking towns and unparalled God-given beauty’.   He was one of 14 international judges for the 2013 Michelangelo Wine Awards.

*   The Guardian writer John Brunton visited the Winelands as a guest of SA Tourism, and titled his article ‘South Africa’s Cape top 10 wine route‘, recommending Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, the Swartland, Tulbagh, and Wellington generally, and Chamonix, Glenwood, Nabygelegen, AA Badenhorst, and Tokara specifically.  He also recommended restaurants Franschhoek Kitchen at Holden Manz (before they lost their Chef Maryna Frederiksen, whom he mentions) , Fyndraai at Solms-Delta, and Readers in Tulbagh.

*   The growing popularity of craft beers in South Africa is highlighted by Voice of America. The popularity of the artisanal Continue reading →

Mercedes Benz Century City Sweet and Amatomu.com Sour Service Awards

The Sweet Service Award  goes to the Mercedes Benz workshop in Century City.  A customer stopped at the workshop, to have an engine warning light checked out.   An electronic diagnostic reading was done, and the mechanic quickly did something, and the warning light disappeared.  A few days earlier the customer had gone to the Culemborg branch for the same problem, and was quoted R 13 000 to fix the throttle problem.  The Century City branch did not charge at all, and even replaced a faulty headlight bulb. All of this on the afternoon before the long weekend, when the workshop staff only had one goal, and that was to finish off and go home.

The Sour Service Award goes to Amatomu.com, a blog aggregator that ranks blogs on the basis of number of readers.   Almost once a day the website goes down.  In general, it takes long for the Statistics page to open, sometimes taking 10 minutes or more.  If the site did not contain such valuable information (number of readers throughout the day, the blog posts and tags that brought the readers to the site, and trend information on daily readership), one would have long given up on it.

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.