Cape Town   -   Victoria & Alfred Waterfront
 

The harbour from the 19th century is today not more used by container ships. Nowadays there is a great shopping and spare time area: The V&A-Waterfront.

In the middle of the 19th century the old harbour was to small for Cape Town and besides it was one of the most dangerous harbours all over the world. So Prince Alfred, the second son of Queen Victoria had deceided to build a new one. 1869 the smaller Alfred-harbour-basin and the larger Victoria-harbour-basin were completed. Until 1930 was this Port heavy used. For the bigger ships, who were built the port was to small again. They built now on an other plather a new harbour, so the old one fall into oblivion.
Just in the middle of the 1980s the local government and some private investors decided for a conversion of these area into an shopping and night-life district. Nowadays there are a gigantic shopping-mall, a casino, some hotels and a lot of pubs and rastaurants (including the Paulaner Bräuhaus with typical german food and beer).

At the V&A Waterfront starts the ferry to Robben Island as well. Nelson Mandela has been there in prison for many years. Besides on the Waterfront is a small seal-colony, who got there own small area. They built specially for the seals a platform. The colony is located next to one of the most fascinating buildings in this area: The clocktower. This tower was in older times directly opposite of the harbour master, so he had a good overview of the time a ship was lying in the port.
The small canal on the southside can be crossed over a bridge who can moved away when a ship want to sail into the harbour basin. This is really an intersting construction.