DAY 162: THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 2013 Rodney: It has been a great day today! We slept late again this morning, in fact so late that we were awakened by Edith who was coming into our cottage to fetch an iron. Seems Karina’s iron was not working so they needed ours. She came and went, and we finally extracted ourselves from bed. After putting on some clothes, I started to prepare breakfast. Patty asked me what I was having and I said cereal and coffee. She said, “Oh.” I knew from the way she said it that she was disappointed, so I asked, “What did you want?” Big mistake. She replied, “I wanted a toast egg.” So, as you would expect, having spoiled her for 52 years, I changed course and set in to preparing a toast egg. And since I was preparing one for her, I went ahead and made one for myself. After breakfast, we spent some time on the computer before getting our clothes together and packed for the evening. After talking with Karina a few minutes about instructions for Edith, we finally got in the car and left. We had some time before being able to check into the hotel in town, and Patty needed to deliver some items to Karen Peiser at Living Hope. We went to LH and found most everyone gone because of holiday clubs and meetings. Karen was not there either, only Tate Elder. We left the “stuff” with him and departed. We drove leisurely to downtown Cape Town along the M3. We had reservations at the Holiday Inn Express for the evening, so we thought leaving by 1:00 or 1:30 would give us time to get to town, find the hotel, park, and spend some time finding our way to and from the evening event. It worked out well. It turned out that we were only 2.5 blocks from the evening event and 1 block from our event tomorrow morning. After scoping out our destinations, we headed back to the hotel. On the way we stopped for a bite to eat. Neither of us had eaten since breakfast at 10:15 this morning, so we were beginning to get hungry. We stopped off at Wimpys and ate a crumbed chicken salad each. I added some chips (fries) with mine just to have something to go with it. I drank a strawberry milkshake and a bottle of still water while Patty drank Coke Zero, now her favorite. We returned to the hotel and rested for an hour or so before getting ready to go to the symphony. We had purchased tickets to the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra for the evening and looked forward to attending. By 7:00 we had left the room and walked the 2.5 blocks to City Hall, the home of the Philharmonic. The orchestra is an approximate 55-piece orchestra representing the variety of musical instruments. The conductor, Yasuo Shinozaki is from Japan and possesses quite a substantial resume of musical success throughout the world including London, Scotland, Frankfurt, Sweden and Nuremberg, just to name a few. The guest soloist tonight was Italian pianist extraordinaire, Antonio Pompa-Baldi. His resume is no less impressive. He has toured four continents, including China where he debuted in the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. A 1998 top prize winner at the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris, he followed that success by taking first prize in the 1999 Cleveland International Piano Competition. He has performed at Cleveland’s Severance Hall, Milan’s Sala Verdi, the Teatro Diana in Naples, and New York’s Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. In 2001 he was the Silver Prize winner of the Van Cliburn Piano Competition. The works performed tonight were “Night on Bald Mountain” by Mussorgsky; “Piano Concerto No. 1 on F# Minor, Op. 1” by Rachmaninov; ‘The Firebird Suite” by Stravinsky; and “Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18, by Rachmaninov. Both Rachmaninov pieces were performed by Pompa-Baldi with the Cape Philharmonic. They were all spectacular and were played to a full house with standing room only. One of the features that fascinated us was the fact that there were seats behind the orchestra. They were like you would find at a football stadium (no backs or arms). We assumed that they must be the cheap seats. They were all taken and people were actually sitting in the aisles. We sat on the second row of the balcony, always our favorite spot. We enjoyed the concert immensely and left quickly to return to the hotel. After all, it was 10:30 and being out at night in Cape Town is never safe, so we hurried back and returned safely. Another exciting day begins in the morning, and we have to be out by 7:00 for another event. More about that later. So, until tomorrow . . . .
Posted on: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 21:32:58 +0000
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