It’s boiling hot in Joburg this week. But I’m in a winter wonderland in Colorado.

My best friend Claire lives in Colorado Springs and I’m visiting her, between visits to Washington D.C., Baltimore, Taos, Santa Fe, and Middlebury. It’s a long trip, happening right as autumn changes to winter, which means this year I’m kind of having 2Winters instead of 2Summers.

Every year in early summer, a bunch of private gardens in Joburg open up to the public as part of the Gardens of the Golden City series. This is a rare and special opportunity; This city has some incredibly beautiful gardens with incredibly beautiful houses attached to them.

When I first started 2Summers, I blogged about practically every Jozi restaurant I went to. (Even Spur.) I’m a bit more selective these days, as writing about every restaurant in town is neither feasible nor desirable. But I’ve been to quite a few interesting Jozi restaurants in the past few weeks, and as I don’t have time to write eight individual posts I’m lumping them all into one.

Seventh in an occasional blog series called This Is the East, about hidden spots on Johannesburg’s East Rand. This edition features Hodad’s, a locally owned fast-food joint in Edenvale.

I love supporting small, locally owned businesses that do their jobs better than big, international corporations. Hodad’s in Edenvale is a perfect example of this.

Picasso’s Mexican Taqueria, which I’ve decided is South Africa’s best Tex-Mex restaurant, is not in Joburg or Cape Town. It’s in a small tourist town in Mpumalanga province called White River, not far from the Kruger Park.

One decade of blogging. This means I’ve been blogging for more than 20 percent of my life. It also means a baby born on the day I published my first post in June 2010 – here it is, in case you’re curious – is now old enough to actually read and comprehend this blog. It means I’ve currently published 951 blog posts, including this one, and will probably surpass the 1000-post mark in 2020.