Best start to a tour… ever.

So, we landed in Cape Town yesterday and immediately jumped in a cab bound for the Table Bay Hotel. The Table Bay is generally regarded as being the city’s best hotel (it’s in the “Leading Hotels Of The World” group, don’t you know) and is definitely one of the major perks of our annual South Africa trip.

We were sat in the lobby waiting for our rooms to be prepared and decided to wander outside into the sunshine and have a closer look at the statue of a giant golden seal (the hotel’s emblem) that sits resplendently on the harbourside. The statue features a series of commemorative plaques bearing the names of the many illustrious figures who have stayed here over the years, and to pass the time we spent a while examining them in closer detail. We were suitably impressed. Examples included:

- Michael Jackson
- Snoop Dogg
- Maroon Five
- Wesley Snipes
- Vladimir Putin
- Manchester United
- Stevie Wonder
- Robert De Niro
- Quincy Jones
- Barack Obama
- … and, just above Obama and slightly to the left… us.

The Lightyears.

We have a plaque on the Table Bay’s Golden Seal. And in case you don’t believe me, I’ve posted a photo above.

I suspect that if Putin discovered that he featured on the side of a statue, he’d play things pretty cool. Not us. We proceeded to take a variety of shameless photos of ourselves pointing and grinning at our name, flipping the thumbs-up and generally behaving like the worst kind of tourists. But we didn’t care. We’ve got our name on a statue. With a little union jack under it.

Our mothers will be so proud.

Best start to a tour… ever.

ps. this actually got me thinking – how many other plaques have been forged in our honour without us knowing? If we were to return one day to the Knutsford M6 Travelodge, would one of the concrete parking bollards bear the legend “The Lightyears stayed here – and they saw that it was good”? There’s simply no way of knowing for sure.