A delicious birthday lunch, and a gorgeous cat.

Yesterday we met family and friends for my early birthday lunch at the nearby Oyster Box Hotel. The Ocean Terrace Restaurant which overlooks the Indian Ocean, is a favourite place of ours for eating out.

There was a display in the foyer to celebrate the birth of baby George. The arrangement of red anthiriums was really gorgeous.

There were seven of us for lunch, and we had a really jolly time. Before deciding on my choice from the menu, I decided to go and check out the traditional curry buffet. Durban has a big Indian population and curries are a speciality. There were about a dozen to choose from and I really would have liked to try each one, but it would have been an impossibility if I still wanted to fit into my skirt, so I only tried about six.  🙂

Here’s my sister and I with the famous Umhlanga lighthouse in the background

This was my choice of dessert, an ice cream sundae with halva, hot fudge chocolate and peppermint crisp. It was sooo YUMMY. The pic is a bit out of focus, but you get the idea. 🙂

After eating all this food,  I suddenly found myself the lucky recipient of two cupcakes, complete with a birthday sparkler. I decided it would be wise to take these home and save them for teatime much later.

All too soon, it was time to say our goodbyes for a whole seven months. I guess time will fly by as it usually does these days, and before we know it, we’ll all be together again.

Outside the front of the hotel is a really old rickshaw. At the beginning of the 20th century there were more than 2,000 rickshaw-pullers operating in Durban, and it was an everyday mode of transport. Today they are just a tourist attraction.

It may look to you as though I am the only occupant here, but you would be quite wrong in that assumption. Having an afternoon nap, was the hotel’s resident cat Skabenga (meaning hooligan or vagabond in Zulu), who has made this luxury hotel his permanent home for the past ten years. It all started when he wandered onto the property as a stray, and was fed tasty and expensive seafood tidbits by the guests. He soon realised he was onto a good thing, and decided to stay. Can you blame him? He has a favourite couch, and takes daily  strolls around the hotel, enjoying the spoils that come with his status as the ‘main cat’ on the block. I was reading that Skabenga is renowned for his impeccable timing, and emerges every time there is a red carpet occasion at the hotel, such as the royal cocktail party held for Prince Rainier and Princess Charlene of Monaco, so I was rather thrilled that he was waiting there for me on my birthday. 😎  He certainly does look well fed, doesn’t he?

I’m going to be rather busy packing and travelling for the next few weeks, but I’ll try and pop in on the blogs occasionally, and I’m sure I’ll do a post on the Centenary birthday celebrations once it’s all over.