Mount Nelson (Cape Town)

Mount Nelson is a hotel, but it's also an excellent place for food. The hotel is a favorite of English visitors because of its high tea. It also has an excellent restaurant, but more on that later.

When Cape Town weather isn't being it's insane fickle self, you can sit on the terrace.

The menu of teas would probably be very exciting for a tea connoisseur (which I'm not). They were organized by country. I just went ahead and started with the Rooibos because it was local, and I got tired of having Kenyan tea 3 times a day for weeks.

I went straight for the food. It's buffet style, and there were sandwiches, chocolates, macaroons... really anything I've ever had with tea except for scones, which were noticeably missing. I didn't really miss them much, it's just that they were missing. They also didn't have the most amazing clotted cream ever (which is in London), but I hardly thought about it until days later.

We had 3 whole plates of food!! It was delicious! The rooibos was pretty good too. A waiter goes around putting the tea in and then removing it in case you're incompetent. It turns out that I did need their help. On a different day I was busy updating my life on Facebook and let my green tea go to waste.

If you're patient, you might get a visitor! This cat seems to like the terrace area. there are two other ones that  wander around the rest of the hotel.

In case you don't know what tea you want to try next/want to buy some tea, there's a "sniffing station" which is what my waitress told me. Her manager told her to use a different verb, but I can't remember what that verb is.

Since we were staying at the Mount Nelson, we also had an opportunity to try their regular food.

We were too lazy to go out one day, so we ordered in.

Surprisingly good mushroom risotto and pizza. The soup was tasteless.

We had our dinner with a local wine. It has the longest name I have ever seen.... I think they actually just joined several words so that they can have such a long name. No corkage in a hotel room! yay

Just as an aside, don't go to South Africa and not try their BILTONG!! It's a delicious local beef jerky. Well it might be a different animal, but you don't have to worry about that.

A local helped us pick by squishing the meat and picking the ones that were perfectly tender and marbled. Then we just told them how much we wanted in Rand, and the lady behind the counter sliced it up and put it in a brown bag for us. I wish I could tell you what town we were in, but I have no idea.

I'm still salivating thinking about it... I don't think I would have made it past customs with a pound of this stuff, but if the flight weren't so long I would have tried.