Cape Town is a captivating city.

The hub is a huge and bustling harbor area with countless gourmet restaurants, big, beautiful hotels, shopping malls and frequent live entertainment. It’s all walkable. It’s safe. It’s oh so cosmopolitan. The weather is almost always perfect. Look in any direction and there’s something to behold. Few cities share it’s mix of water, architecture and mountains. I’m guessing Rio de Janeiro can compare. Maybe some cities on the west coast of South America. My frequently traveling followers are free to educate me.

We stayed at the Table Bay Hotel, which is right on the harbor and had the all-time best breakfast buffet. We ate at the hotel, a burger-and-shake joint, a seafood restaurant with fish fresh from the harbor area and a steak eatery. Every meal was memorable.

We took two tours the first of our two full days in Cape Town.

We took a 25-minute ferry ride to Robben Island, which for centuries has mostly been a prison facility and a leper colony. It’s most famous as the detention site for the first 18 years of Nelson Mandela’s 27 in South African jails. We learned of Mandela and of apartheid. It was a downer. Bonnie and I thought impalas in the bush had a better chance of survival than a black person in apartheid South Africa.

That afternoon we took the cable car to the top of iconic Table Mountain. The views of the city and the beaches were exhilarating. It was so clear that when I looked west, I could see Robben Island and reminded of what we learned about current South Africa. Despite a vibrant tourist industry, diamond mines, gold mines, medical minds that originated human organ transplants and many more resources, the country has 43 (or much higher) percent unemployment.

The view of the future of this unique city isn't quite as clear.