The view from the Table Bay Hotel's Presidential Suite, the morning after.

Had an amazing experience at the Table Bay Hotel a few weeks back when Karina and I were invited to their #ChefTableBay event. I had no idea we were going to be doing a proper Masterchef competition to determine the winner and with our non-existant cooking skills, we were a really really LONG shot of winning, especially with real food and wine bloggers attending!

Watch the video below from the event – I feel like a proper rockstar watching it!

Here is a quick video walkthrough I made of the Presidential Suite at the Table Bay Hotel. So you can guess who won… :)

The Table Bay Hotel is one of Cape Town’s top 5 star hotels, situated at the V&A Waterfront.
Not only is it an exquisite hotel, it also boasts one of the best restaurants in Cape Town, the Atlantic Grill, which is where 1 lucky person can win a dinner for 2!
If you not in Cape Town, you can also win! Read further down…

How do I enter?

All you have to do is tweet about the Chef’s Table Bay event that is happening on the 24th of September, include the hashtag #chefstablebay and my Twitter username @JBagley. A simple retweet will do it too!

RT @JBagley A personal chauffeur, cocktails and a cooking show. #chefstablebay sounds amazing! http://jasn.me/pX0O0o. Click the link to enter.

Other examples:

• #chefstablebay sounds amazing! http://jasn.me/pX0O0o @JBagley [click here to tweet this]
• A personal chauffeur, cocktails and a cooking show. #chefstablebay sounds amazing! http://jasn.me/pX0O0o @JBagley [click here to tweet this]

Some basic rules

• The more tweets, the more entries you have to win!
• On Monday 26th of September, I’ll draw a winner from all the tweets received and contact you via Twitter.
• Prize is valid until the 31st of December 2011.
• If you are not in Cape Town, pick any Sun International destination country wide and you can have your romantic dinner there!

So what is the Chefs Table Bay all about?

A few bloggers have been selected to enjoy a day at the Table Bay Hotel. We will be driven to the event by chauffeur, treated to cocktails, enjoy our own cooking show and dine at the Atlantic Grill restaurant!

This competition is to help me win the prize at the Chefs Table Bay event and you’ll get to win dinner for 2! Even if I don’t win, I’ll still give away this prize. I’m just betting on enough people entering my competition to hopefully guarantee me winning a prize too!

Good luck to both of us!

The point of this post is how addictive it has become. Every now and then a spot opens up in a game and I invite someone new. They walk off that court almost begging me to invite them to the next game.

I can’t get enough of it!

Also really want a pair of these customised Nike boots. Pity you can only order them in the US. I’d be the mainest guy with custom designed boots like these.

That little skwigly bit at the bottom of the space shuttle orbit is called camera shake. I had to manually press the shutter button to start the 25 second exposure as I don’t have a remote release. (Ordering one today though!)

Looking for the full hi-res image? Download it here (2.9MB 4288 x 2848). It’s free to use, for whatever you wish. Time magazine or National Geographic, if you use my image, a link to my website would be rad.

Some top notch barista skills at Common Ground Cafe, that’s for sure.

Sidenote: Check out http://artinmycoffee.com for some amazing coffee art.

Cape Realty International has launched a new blog called Luxury Cape Town. In conjunction with the blog they have launched a competition where you could win a weekend of luxury in Camps Bay. The prize involves a weekend stay at a luxury Camps Bay home, a chauffeured limousine, two bodyguards (on hand for the duration of the weekend) as well as a night out to Camps Bay’s hot spots with VIP treatment.

To win the prize, simply like their Facebook fan page and let them know which celebrity you would like to live like for a weekend. The more creative and wackier the better!

Follow them on Twitter for more regular updates, and if you have an iPhone, download their iPhone app, Luxury Cape Town.

Just some interesting stats on the cruise liner. Via Wikipedia:

The Queen Mary 2 has:

• fifteen restaurants and bars
• five swimming pools
• a casino
• a ballroom
• 1000+ seat theatre
• capacity for 3,056 passengers and 1,253 officers and crew
• and weighs a massive 148,528 tons!

It’s not the largest ship on the seas, with the MS Oasis of the Seas currently holding those honours.

More pics after the jump.

See more pics of the Queen Mary 2 on my Flickr stream.

So apart from the buzz and excitement we experienced in Long Street during the 2010 World Cup Draw, we booked ourselves into the Protea Hotel Victoria Junction, just around the corner from the V&A Waterfront. I’ve stayed at a number of hotels, but I’ve never had the feeling like I was family at a hotel! Somehow, they got wind of it being my anniversary (how, I don’t know) and proceeded to decorate our loft bedroom with candles, rose petals, Lindt chocolates and balloons.

If that was not enough, they printed pics of the 2 of us (found on my Flickr photostream I guess), and put them in the room, read my blog to find out I am a massive Ferrari fan and bought me a small replica Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa with a magazine, and bought my wife a Cosmopolitan mag. Along with that, there was a bottle of champagne and a strawberries and chocolate platter that had Happy Anniversary written in chocolate on it.

The handwritten card they left for us said the following:

Dear Jason and Karina

Welcome to the Protea Hotel Victoria Junction! We are honoured to have you with us!

We’ll try steer clear of any weird vegetables and keep them as far away from you as possible! Apart from that we hope you have a fabulous time with us!

Regards Pieter and Team VJ

P.S. Chelsea vs Manchester City, Sat 19:30, Supersport 3. Biltong and beer from room service!

For those that know us, I’m not a big vegetable eater and we are both massive Chelsea fans – they really found out as much as they could about us and personalised the entire experience.

Dinner at their Moulin Rouge restaurant on the Saturday evening was just as special. We had a complimentary bottle of wine (which we swapped for our favourite JC le Roux Rose champagne), and another amazing chocolate mouse dessert platter (also with “Happy Anniversary” written on it) sent to our room after our meal – the soccer was about to start, and didn’t want to miss it!

So, what was going to be an ordinary hotel experience, turned out to be extraordinary! I’ve never had much of an affiliation with any hotel chain, but I’ll definitely be looking out for the nearest Protea Hotel if and when I need a place to stay.

So a big thanks to Protea Hotels and all the staff at the Victoria Junction. I’ll definitely be back soon!

The view from our hotel room at the Protea Hotel, Victoria Junction

As always, a small disclaimer: I won the 2 night stay in a Twitter competition about 6 months ago and was never asked to blog about it. The rest, was completely of their own initiative.

Please note that these pics are not mine. :) If they are infringing on copyright, I’ll remove them.

The biggest highlight for most of us was Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, coming out to South Africa to speak and mingle with us bloggers. As part of Younique, we somehow managed to organise a pretty smooth running event, and over the past few days I have had the privilege to spend some really quality time with Matt. He really is the most humble and down to earth online personality I have met.

Sunday, a couple of us headed off to the Stormhoek farm where Graham Knox braaied us some awesome steaks and veggies, not to mention the number of different bottles of wine he whipped out for us to try. It’s these type of relaxed, chilled environments out in mountains, where you can really get to know people. Matt shared with us a number of really interesting stories, upcoming projects and personal things, that I’ll never blog about, nor tell anyone, but they just made me realise how genuine an “oke” he really is. (Matt thought it was strange how we called everyone “okes” here in SA. Hehe)

Back to the event – Tyler and I learnt tons about organising Wordcamp. One thing is for sure, it’s a lot of work! There are a ton of things we will improve on for next years event, so expect an even bigger and better Wordcamp SA next year around!

I have to say a big up to Henk from Skyrove – he really made sure everyone at Wordcamp was sorted with Wifi – even bringing in a 2nd hotspot after we managed to bring down the 1st one!

Secondly to Matt and Warwick for coming out from the US to attend and speak at Wordcamp – I learnt a great deal from your talks. Not only was it great to hear you talk, but to also spend time with you guys after Wordcamp.

Check out my Wordcamp SA wrap up video on Zoopy that I created just after Wordcamp. See you all next year!