Cape Town - The newest addition to Cape Town's Big 7 tourist attractions is making social media headlines and gaining hundreds of hastags on Instagram, as this new scenic walkway trough the Mother City CBD offers some of the best and diverse share-able photo opportunities for visitors.
Brett Hendricks, Director of the Cape Point Partnership, announced that the Cape Town Big 6 will now be the Cape Town Big 7 at the opening of the World Travel Market Africa that took place between 15 to 17 April at the Cape Town Convention Centre.
The new Cape Town City Walk now joins Cape Point, Robben Island, Groot Constantia, Table Mountain Cableway, Kirstenbosch and the V&A Waterfront as Cape Town’s “bucket list” of key tourist attractions.
The first official City Walk was launched on Saturday 18 April 2015 at the first of what is to be a monthly event - City Walk Saturdays - from 10:00 to 14:00. At the first event already, the official hashtag, #walkCapeTown, gained nearly 600 photographs and videos on Instagram only.
The first City Walk was enhanced with artful displays of various South African cultural representatives reading from African literature. Other aspects that made the City Walk a pleasurable experience were interactive games like life-size chess, outdoor yoga and Thai-chi, jumping castles for children and dancing under the oaks.
Cape Town’s CBD is an accessible and popular pedestrian zone for residents, office workers and visitors. This is why the Cape Town Partnership announced that it would be facilitating the enhancement of this experience through the City Walk – a community place-making project in the heart of urban Cape Town.
The Cape Town City Walk will seek similar energy to that which ignited happenings such as First Thursdays, Moonlight Mass and Open Streets by giving the citizens of the city a platform through which they can participate and contribute.
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Unlike these events, the City Walk Cape Town is not limited to a specific date and time, although the monthly City Walk Saturday will act as a flagship to invite the public to proactively come into and celebrate their city. In addition, the route will be a test zone for extending business hours in the central city beyond daytime trade.
Cape Town Partnership CEO Bulelwa Makalima-Ngewana said at the launch of the first official City Walk that “the Cape Town City Walk is not a complete work, and it does not belong to the Cape Town Partnership, but is an initiative to open the streets to both locals, and tourists looking to experience the city like a local".
Makalima-Ngewana adds that "the City Walk will see the surfacing of different storylines to create a more inclusive city, acknowledging the important role that history and memory plays in the life of our city, and helping citizens to find spaces to share their own stories and interact with each other".
"In addition to this," Makalima-Ngewana says that the Cape Town Partnership "hope that this space will be a test zone for extending business hours in the central city and boosting the district’s economic potential".
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