Day 713 – City view

Having (finally) renewed our Kirstenbosch passes, we took advantage of the early-bird entry policy and entered Kirstenbosch early.

There were some decent views across the hazy city awakening beneath us.

In this image: Athlone Power Station (two chimneys), Newlands Brewery (steam plume), Newlands Cricket Stadium (floodlights) and Newlands Rugby Stadium (big non-descript block to the left of the Brewery)

A bit of a stroll, plenty of plants, some (sadly rather average) bird experiences and a touch of fresh air (look how high we were above the city smog) made for a great start to the morning. Less so the notification that pinged through while we were there about the imminent Stage 4 loadshedding.

Today in photos

Not all mine, either.

Firstly, a-ha’s appearance to sign copies of their 73rd greatest hits album: 25:The Very Best Of a-ha at Oxford Street’s HMV, which I couldn’t attend because Oxford Street is in London and I am in Cape Town. Initially, this seemed like a very bad thing, but it wasn’t really because I got to go round a brewery. There are no breweries on Oxford Street in London. (I haven’t verified this fact in any way, but it seems a fairly good bet).

Photo from HMV get closer

But as I say, thanks to the Ogilvy and the champion taste of Carling Black Label, I was invited on a Brewery Tour and Tasting – the beer, not the brewery – which was fun, interesting, informative and quite staggering when it came to sheer size and numbers. They make a lot of beer in Newlands. A lot. More than 1,000,000 litres a day.
And that, as I may have mentioned, is a lot.

The official photographs, from the official photographer are yet to come (and we’ll surely revisit this when they do), but I did knock a few pics off with my trusty 8MP X10 camera.
Keen mathematicians amongst you will have calculated that that amounts to a whole 3,000,000 pixels more than an iPhone 4, of course. Loving all these 0’s this evening.

Here’s a remarkable device filling the bottles in the bottling plant

It’s called a bottle filler and it spins around rather fast.
The whole bottling plant was hugely impressive (and rather noisy) as this short collection of video clips proves. It was a bit like watching the Discovery Channel in person. Except that there were no repeats.
The rest of the photos are here – blurring slightly as the day progressed. I wonder why.