Autumn 2012

With the changing of the seasons coming upon us in the next few weeks, we can already feel a nip in the morning air. Daytime temperatures are still up in the high 20 degrees with no wind, truly probably the best time of the year to visit Cape Town and Glen Avon Lodge in Constantia.

Our winter rates are valid between May and September and we have decided to offer a kiddies under sixteen Easter special and a December kiddies special with free tickets to visit, ‘The Two Oceans Aquarium’ and encourage our local South African families to visit Cape Town during the school holidays this year. Please mark your enquiries ‘Easter or Xmas kiddies special’.

For the coming summer season we are pleased to announce that we will be able to offer two new Superior Deluxe Suites, leading out onto the pool garden, bringing together the number of these very spacious and luxuriously appointed suites, with butlers cupboards to five. These suites have proven to be our most popular rooms and are furnished for guests, who require a longer than average stay at ‘Glen Avon’. Please book these rooms early for the coming summer season, to avoid disappointment.

As many of our guests have got to know the staff well over the years, we like to keep them up to date on ‘What’s happening’ with those involved with the day to day running of Glen Avon.This winter, ‘love is in the air’, with Livison planning to marry his longtime sweetheart in Malawi, during his annual leave in June. We wish him well and hope to meet his new wife on his return to Cape Town. All the other members of staff will be taking a well earned rest, at staggered times during the winter months, after a busy and most successful summer season.

New Year 2012 at Glen Avon

January 2012 and the start of a New Year for Glen Avon. Holiday fever has hit Cape Town, but in Constantia the tempo is relaxed and laid back as usual.. Looking out of my window, the light is extra bright, there is a slight breeze and from every vantage point around the property the views are like a scenic painting of brightly coloured flowers, age old trees and rolling lawns. This is truly another ‘day in paradise’, one of many at this time of the year and certainly the reason I choose to stay in South Africa and the lovely area of Constantia.

Constantia is known as one of the best gourmet destinations in the Cape and at this time of the year bookings have to be made well in advance, at all the wine restaurants. Our diningroom is open daily for hearty breakfasts and three course gourmet dinners with canopes and pre-dinner drinks served on the expansive front verandah, adorned with a mass of Iceberg roses, close enough to touch. We also cater for guests returning home on late flights, offering early dinners and a place to shower and change into their winter woolies before embarking on their trip home. Early evenings are a special time of the day, when the candles are lit and all is quiet, except for the buzz of conversations highlighting the best of the day’s activities and for some of us lucky ones, future plans for another ‘day in paradise’.

Beautiful Earth

Glen Avon, together with “The Good Cook’s & their Country Houses” recently held a marketing workshop in Cape Town, which proved to be a great success and we were able to introduce our new range of bathroom amenities by giving special complementary packs to many of the operators that regularly use us, as well as all the Good Cook’s properties that attended the workshop.

These new products called “Beautiful Earth” are produced in South Africa and are completely Eco and Pet friendly. They are standard in all our rooms at the guest house – a real treat for our guests this season! We have also been busy in the garden and have completely re planted the largest of our front garden flowering beds and now await a new burst of colour from our summer flowering blooms, which rooms one to six look out over, when guests are sitting out on their patio’s or from their bedroom windows. The “veggie” patch has also been newly planted and we should have a new batch of crunchy fresh salads and vegetables ready for picking shortly.The staff also have a new canteen to look forward to shortly and some of their living quarters are being enlarged and an outside relaxation area to bask away in the sun on their off time.

As part of our on going educational & upliftment program, all the ladies on our staff together with our marketing manager and a front liaison manager, took the “Red Bus Sightseeing Tour”, which took them from the V&A Waterfront, stopping off at many of the well known places of interest in and around Cape Town and along the Atlantic Seaboard. This proved to be a great success and special thanks go to the Red Bus Company for providing us with two complementary tickets towards this staff outing. I’m sure our guests will get to hear of their special individual experiences, encountered along the way. This together with the “Blue Bus Tour” is the best way to get a thorough introduction to all the most important sights in and around Cape Town, without the hassle of trying to find parking in the busy City centre. We are able to book your seats online at Glen Avon.

Hop-On, Hop-Off Open Top Sightseeing Red Bus Tour of Cape Town

A great way to see Cape Town is to take a tour with the Hop-On, Hop-Off Sightseeing Open Top Red Bus Circular Tour around the city!

This ride takes in the city centre, up to the lower Cableway which goes up Table Mountain, the scenic Atlantic seaboard returning back to the Cape Town Waterfront, where it departs from just outside the Two Oceans Aquarium. The bus runs hourly in the winter months and half hourly in the season (September through to end March). You can safely leave your rented car at the Cape Town Waterfront and then sit back to enjoy the sights. You can easily hop off the bus at the places that are of special interest to you and grab the next bus that passes.

There are about 16 stops in all, visiting the S.A. Museum, the Jewish Museum, District Six Museum, The Castle of Good Hope,the Gold museum and for those, who would like to buy their loved ones something special, there is ‘Jewel Africa’ for gemstones and for a trip up Table Mountain, the cableway. On the way back there is a visit to Camps Bay with its cosmopolitan roadside cafes overlooking the pristine beach, then taking in the elite properties of Clifton and stopping off in Sea Point, before returning to the Cape Town Waterfront. You can also combine this tour with the blue bus scenic tour that visits Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, the Constantia Winelands, visiting Groot Constantia, the World of Birds, a township and harbour visit to the fishing villiage of Hout Bay and returning along the same route as the red bus through Camps Bay, Sea Point and back to the Cape Town Waterfront.

These two tours would equip any visitor to Cape Town with an insight into the vast diversity of attractions that the, ‘Mother City’ has to offer.

 

Table Mountain Experience

September is the time of year when the Glen Avon team, get into gear and make sure the staff are adequately equipped to present to our valued guests, their personal encounters on what to expect in and around touring Cape Town and its many attractions. With this in mind, last week all the front of house staff were given an exhilarating cable car trip up Table Mountain and came back with loads of pictures and first hand knowledge of this premier tourist attraction. After experiencing the wonderful views on the ascent of the face of Table Mountain, they were able to discover and point out, all the different areas of Cape Town that could be seen from the top and also to walk some of the many pathways and discover some of the fauna like the friendly Dasie’s and the many varieties of Fynbos that exists on the mountain slopes. They also learnt about the Cable Car itself and how the base is filled with water to serve as ballast to steady the cable car when the wind blows.

As it was a truly warm early summers day when the staff arrived at the lower cable-way station, it was nevertheless surprising to see just how busy the cableway was for this time of the year, with quite a few tour buses and a large portion of the tourists, having taken different modes of transport from the V&A Waterfront including the Red Bus Tour, which stops at the Lower cable-way station on its travels. This is the next tour we have planned for the staff, which hopefully will take place in the coming week, weather permitting. These educational ventures which we encourage the staff to participate in, not only enable the staff to be a vital wealth of information to our guests, but also, it has a very positive affect on the personal growth of each staff member.