Long Street Baths - The Company's Garden

09h35 Keeping the Long Street Baths on your left, walk right onto Orange Street past the Shell petrol station and the Mosque.

Turn left into Queen Victoria Street.

Keep walking down the road, passing the Italian Consulate and turn the corner just opposite the Planetarium.

Go into Company’s Garden by crossing over Queen Victoria Street.

The Company’s Garden
www.capetown.gov.za/en/parks/Pages/TheCompanysGarden.aspx
Tel : (021) 400 2521

The Company (i.e. the Dutch East India Company) needed fresh produce for its ships (this was in the days when Cape Town was just a way post to the orient and not yet a colony in any real sense) and decided to lay out on a convenient flat piece of ground with ample fresh water a fruit and vegetable growing area. Fresh water from Table Mountain still flows through the park under the wonderful treelined Government Avenue (the Houses of Parliament are on one side of the park and the High Court on the other).

Phil and Liz say: These days, the park is very much place to escape the heat of the day and relax, either at the South African Library, the Garden Tea Room (which does superb carrot cake) or in the small but beautiful botanical section of the Garden. Once you find Government Avenue (which is over the other side of the park you came in from), on the other side of it you’ll see Parliament and the Tuinhuis. In fact, the whole park is surrounded by important buildings, not the least of which is The Slave Lodge.