Blogpost a week

Posted on 10 December 2009 in Asides | 4 comments | Tagged in

I signed up for Project52 this morning. Basically, its a group of bloggers that are going to try and blog once a week for an entire year. From the website:

Project52 is a personal challenge geared toward getting fresh content on your website. The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year. Because we all know what it‘s like to procrastinate on our content. A website is not just a fresh design that can be uploaded to the web and forgotten about!

I’m struggling to write a post a month these days, but I can definitely give this a go!

It’s in the details – my 1 year anniversary

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Posted on 8 December 2009 Cape Town

This past weekend Karina and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary. We decided we would stay in the centre of town for the weekend as the World Cup Draw was taking place as well as we are seriously considering moving to the CBD / Seapoint area for a 1 year stint or so. Life is all about experiences and adventures, and moving to town would definitely be one!

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!

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

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.

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How the 2010 World Cup Draw works

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Posted on 4 December 2009 Personal South Africa

As you probably know, Mike and I run Free-kick.tv, a football video blog. With the World Cup Draw upon us, so we thought it would be a great idea to run our very own draw!

In the video, we explain the basic rules of the draw as well as draw the balls to make up our very own World Cup. Watch the video below and make sure you check out the post on Free-kick.tv which explains all the rules as well as shows you which teams we picked into which groups.

Watch the video on Free-kick.tv here.

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11 Amazing Cape Town Stadium pictures

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Posted on 16 November 2009 Cape Town

With only around 200 days until the 2010 Fifa World Cup coming to South Africa, Green Point stadium, now known as Cape Town Stadium is almost complete. Take a look at these amazing pics of the stadium taken in the last week or so.

Cape Town Stadium

Cape Town Stadium

Cape Town Stadium

Cape Town Stadium

Cape Town Stadium

Cape Town Stadium

Cape Town Stadium

Cape Town Stadium

Cape Town Stadium

Cape Town Stadium

Cape Town Stadium

Cape Town Stadium

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

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London and Dubai

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Posted on 3 November 2009 Travel

I’m so over London. There really isn’t anything special about that place or the people. There is nothing majistical about it like Paris, or the feeling of awe like in Dubai. Grey and bland like the weather. That being said, I’ll be back, but only as a hub to get to other European countries and to stop off at Fulham Broadway to watch Chelsea play.

We did however visit China Town in London which was very cool – Chinese everything, everywhere! Had dinner in China Town and I couldn’t walk afterwards I was so full from it. So, Fulham Broadway and China Town I’ll come back for. :)

Dubai

Dubai is just insane. As my cousin who we visited, says, “in Dubai they go big, go home or go bankrupt”. We stayed at the Holiday Inn right next to the Mall of Emirates which houses an indoor ski slope. Yeah, a ski slope in the dessert. The hotel was roughly the same price as London and Paris, but 10 times better. We took taxi’s everywhere, and at R3/km, its really affordable. One thing I was really disappointed about was not seeing any Ferrari’s! I saw tons of Porsche’s, Audi Q7’s, Range Rovers and BMW’s, but no Ferrari’s. We weren’t staying in the area where all the rich Arabs stay I was told.

The 2nd day we relaxed at the Wild Wadi Water Park right across from the Burj al Arab (7 star hotel). Tons of water slides which I went on over and over again while Karina decided rather to tan. One thing I noticed is Dubai loves to show off water – from the water park to every mall and hotel have water features. Where they get all the water from?

Our last day of holiday we spent shopping at the largest mall in the world, which is situated next to the tallest building in the world. Dubai Mall is the size of 50 football pitches, while the Burj Dubai is 818m tall. With electronics being so cheap, I bought Karina a Blackberry and treated myself to an XBox 360. We had to buy an extra bag to carry all the stuff we had bought back to SA! I took some really amazing pictures of the Burj Dubai and surrounding areas. Dubai really is breath-taking.

The last evening we spent with my cousin at his home braaing. A really fitting end to the most amazing holiday. I’ll definitely be back to Dubai and Paris, with London only seeing me for my beloved Chelsea.

Photos will be up soon. I promise.

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