2024_005 Africa – Page 2 – Lynn's Travel Adventures

Stellenbosch and Franschhoek Day Trip

This is going to be quick because it’s already 8:30pm and I’m tired after a 10-hour day trip. It was a great time, though, and I met some amazing people.

Left to right: Diane and Brian from Melbourne; Karina is a pediatric surgeon and Carlos is a liver transplant surgeon from Mexico; Wayne and Wayne’s wife (can’t remember her name) from Sydney; Me; Maureen and Bill from Houston (Bill is also a surgeon and was at the same surgical conference as Karina and Carlos); Leo, Celina, Betty and Allesandro were the youngsters of the group and are from Zurich Switzerland.

We went to two different wine farms. The first one was a large-scale production house, and the 2nd was a small boutique house.

Some of the large stainless-steel casks at Fairview.

For the first tasting we paired 6 wines with cheese. Four of the wines were red, which I usually don’t like, but these were very light, so they weren’t bad.

The tour included lunch. I had a delicious sirloin steak but forgot to take a picture. Sorry foodies. But, hey, it’s the first time.

Then we went to the pretty little town of Franschhoek where we had a little time to wander the streets.

The wine farm in Franschhoek was LaBria, one of the oldest wine farms in South Africa established in 1694. This was much smaller with an output of 70,000 bottles of wine per harvest.

In addition to fermenting in the casks, the wines will also ferment in the bottles for up to 10 years.

For this tasting we paired the red wines with chocolate. Two of them were way too dry for me so Carlos was happy to take them off my hands. I ate the chocolate though.

We enjoyed some sparkling wine on the patio. It was a beautiful view.

Then we went back to Stellenbosch where we had a little free time to wander the streets. Carlos, Karina, Maureen, Bill, Diane, Brian and I headed straight to a bar…cuz we hadn’t had enough to drink already. They had beer while I had a sickening sweet strawberry daiquiri which was delicious.

An interesting building we think was a church but we’re not sure.

Finally, it was back in the van for the 45-minute drive back to Cape Town. It was 7:45 before I made it back to the hotel, so it was a very long day. But I had a great time.

Tomorrow is another long day beginning at 7:50, two hours earlier than today. This time I’m heading down the peninsula to visit the Cape of Good Hope and the penguin colony. I’m really looking forward to it.

For now, I’ve got to get ready for bed; I’m exhausted. Talk with you tomorrow.

Cape Town Waterfront

Before I get into today’s adventure (which involved spending a ton of money) let me post a few pics from yesterday. I couldn’t find the card reader for my camera, so I only had the pics from my phone to post. I bought a new card reader today so here are a few photos I took yesterday with my camera.

The wind in this area is so strong, the trees are bent at this extreme angle. The wind actually comes from the opposite direction, but it bounces off the buildings and causes the trees to bend. I wonder how many years it took for this to happen.

Today started with a harbor cruise that was part of the 2-day hop on/hop off tickets. I took an early cruise, which wasn’t the best time as it was a little foggy, but it was still very nice.

Hop On/Hop Off had their own cruise boat.

Found this guy hanging out in a tire along the pier. He’s a Cape Town otter. I saw the tails of two big ones in the center of the harbor.

The harbor side of my hotel, the Victoria and Alfred Hotel. Before the building was a hotel, it was a rope storage facility.

The cruise was only about 30 minutes long but by the time it was over, the early fog had cleared, and it was quite nice.

Table Mountain with its “tablecloth” of clouds. It was very cool.

Then it was time for a healthy lunch.

A raspberry, meringue and cream milkshake.

OK, so it may not have been very healthy, but it was delicious. Milkshakes are something else I tend to avoid as they’re usually more like smoothies than milkshakes. But I found a place called Gibson’s which has over 250 different flavors, including Sweet and Salted Popcorn, Rice Crispies Breakfast Shake and Waffle and Maple Syrup. Seriously, who does that to a milkshake? Anyway, it had real ice cream and, while different from an American shake, it was still very good. And, with tip, it cost a grand total of $5.47 so it was very inexpensive lunch.

After my shake it was time for me to do my part to help the South African economy and support local artisans. And, oh boy, did I help! I spent so much I got a fraud alert warning from the credit card asking if it was really me. Unfortunately, it was. But I got some very cool things including some jewelry (of course I did), a hand carved mask and a beautiful piece of artwork.

This is the mask I bought. It’s hand carved and painted. It’s really pretty.

I forgot to take a picture of my artwork before it was wrapped up but it’s similar to this piece, only smaller. It’s a piece of buffalo hide tacked on a wood frame with the images of the big 5 (lion, rhino, water buffalo, elephant and leopard) etched on with a solder iron. It’s a very cool effect.

I had to ship the mask and artwork home which cost almost as much as the items but there was no other way to get it home. I could have probably gotten the mask into my backpack but there was no way to get the artwork home as it is about 24″ wide.

Part of the market where I shopped. It was mostly handicrafts, clothes, linens and jewelry. It had some beautiful things.

While recovering from my shopping spree, I took a short stroll around the neighborhood and found Somerset Hospital. It was originally built in 1818 and is still in operation.

Then it was back to the hotel to defrizz my hair (humidity is 85%) before meeting with my representative from Timbuktu Travel, Jonty. As you may remember, Peter and I first planned and booked this trip in Jan 22 before he had any ALS symptoms. Jonty was very understanding and flexible as our plans, and lives, changed over the next 18 months. He came to the hotel to meet me, and we had a lovely chat over drinks. It was wonderful to meet him after 28 months of planning this trip.

No, I wasn’t standing in a hole. Jonty really is that big.

Since I had only had a milkshake for lunch, I decided to save the ham/cheese sandwich I made from the breakfast buffet for tomorrow and went to Quay Four for dinner. I had seen it from the Harbor Cruise and since it’s just around the corner from the hotel I thought I’d check it out.

The Quay Four restaurant is just to the left of Cape Union Mart.

The restaurant’s claim to fame is selling the most beer in a day than any other restaurant or bar in the southern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere is everything south of the Equator including 90% of South America, Australia, New Zealand, the islands in the South Pacific and the lower third of Africa. That’s a lot of countries. The record occurred after South Africa won one of their 4 rugby world cup titles. The Quay Four sold over 19,000 liters (over 5,000 gallons) of draft beer that day. That’s a lot of beer.

Total cost of dinner, including tip, was just over $12. The same meal in London was over $30.

Tomorrow I’m off to wine country with a day trip to Stellenbosch and Franschhoek. The trip includes 3 winery stops and lunch. It’s a small group (only 13 people) and I’ve heard the countryside is beautiful. It should be fun. I’ll let you know.

Have a good night, everyone!!

Day 1 in South Africa

I am so glad I discovered that Windsor was so close to Heathrow. In the taxi I was at Heathrow in less time than it would have taken to walk to the train station. After I got to the airport, I took the tube to Covent Gardens. I went there because, first, I’d never been there. And second, the Picadilly line that goes to Covent Garden dead ends into Heathrow terminal 5, which is where I needed to be for my flight. I left my roller duffle and backpack in left luggage and headed out for the one-hour ride into central London.

I decided on a mini spa day with a mani/pedi and a massage. They were all wonderful! After that I headed to the shopping/restaurant area for lunch.

I had another British standard, Shepard’s Pie. I thought one of the items in the dish on the left were potatoes. They weren’t….they were parsnips…eew.

One of several markets in Covent Garden.

After wandering the markets, I headed to the Royal Opera House for a “behind the scenes” tour. No photos were allowed in the theater but here are a few of the public areas.

This is the entrance to the theater and is original from the 1858 theater.

This entire glass area was raised from the ground floor to the mezzanine.

After the tour I was exhausted from all the walking/standing in the 90-minute tour, so I headed back to Heathrow.

Here’s a string quintet playing in one of the markets. I saw them on the way to the restaurant and they were still playing hours later when I went back to the tube after the tour.

My flight from London went off without a hitch. It was 11 1/2 hours but, with the help of Ambien, I slept for 6 of them! The lay flat seat was a little more comfortable on AA than on the BA flight, but I was so tired I don’t think it really mattered.

Delicious dinner of pork and potatoes on my flight.

We landed in Cape Town on time, and it was more emotional than I expected. As soon as we touched down, I remembered how badly Peter wanted to take this trip and I got a bit teary. I’ll be thinking of him a lot over the next 10 days, but I know he’d be glad I am here.

Table Mountain (flat mountain) and Devil’s Peak (pointy mountain to the right) from the plane.

When I arrived, there was a representative from the travel company met me plane side, and he got me through immigrations very quickly. He handed me over to the driver who brought me to the pretty Victoria and Alfred Hotel at the waterfront. Alfred was Queen Victoria’s second son and he helped develop the waterfront.

My room is lovely with a nice sitting area.

As it was only about noon, the room wasn’t ready, so I checked my luggage with the bellman and headed out to the hop on/hop off bus.

My first stop was Table Mountain. It was a beautiful day with low winds, so it was good time to take the cable car to the top.

Following the cable car line up the mountain. The top is about 3500 feet.

My next stop on the bus was Camp’s Bay.

Lunch was sliders. The location was convenient as the restaurant was across the street from the bus stop.

While a little well done for my taste, they were still good.

Then it was back to the hotel to check in, get to the room, change clothes (clouds had rolled in and it was getting chilly so out of capris and into jeans) then back out again to catch the 4:45pm sunset bus tour that came with my 2-day hop on hop off bus ticket. Unfortunately, it got foggy so by the time we got to the top of Signal Peak, here’s what we saw.

When the driver stopped, she told us to be back in 30 minutes. Seriously??? What exactly were we supposed to look at for 30 minutes? It took about a minute to grab this pic then it was back on the bus as it had gotten cold. I did get a little bit of sunset on the way up, though.

Once back at the hotel, I stopped into the restaurant for a light dinner.

The prawns and rice were delicious except the little suckers looked at me the entire time I was eating them.

Seriously, I’ve been traveling internationally for 40 years. Why do I keep forgetting that if I order seafood anywhere other than the U.S., it comes complete with heads, eyes, tails, etc.? They were at least 3 inches long and there were only 2 tiny bites of edible seafood on them. Luckily, the rice was filling so I’ll be okay until breakfast. Note to self: avoid seafood!

It’s now after 9pm and I’m getting tired, so I’ll close for now. Thanks for traveling with me and I’ll report in tomorrow.