My last night in Cape Town was a blast. Met up with Shannon and a bunch of her friends from their GAP trip. They are such a riot. I think it would have been a fantastic trip, despite the over landing (long bus rides and camping). We checked The Waiting Room (a bar) while waiting (haha) for our table at Royale Burgers. Fantastic burgers. Then we headed to the Dubliner for the rest of the evening.
This morning I had a mini fiasco getting to Franschhoek....I went to pick up my rental car (a 20 min walk from my hotel) and went through a very slow and detailed paperwork process....only to hear the guy say "Now with the Yaris make sure you press the clutch all the way when you start it." I was like "whaaaaaaaaat!?! Are you kidding?!? I need a manual car!" and of course they had none in the dealership. And because I booked through a travel agent there was a whole song and dance on how they couldn't change it without talking to the agent. And then they didn't know how to dial a UK number. Finally some other lady who works there came im and cleared it all up....but I had to wait two hours for them to bring in a car from the airport. Precious minutes in the vineyards ticking away!!
I tried to make the most of it though, and walked down to the District Six museum, one of the areas of Cape Town where 60,000 blacks were forcefully removed from their homes and basically put in slums so that it could be a white area. Rather depressing, but very impressively curated. Really hard to imagine this sort of thing was going on in the 1960s-1980s.
That filled in the two hours nicely, and I picked up my car and began the adventure of driving on the left side of the road. Luckily everyone is a bad driver here so I fit in fine. No one signals, which is good because every time I tried to I turned on the windshield wipers. Everyone drives 20km under the speed limit, which is fine because the speed limits are 20km faster than at home, and I didn't have to make many turns or go through any roundabouts. The strangest thing was the angle of the rearview mirror - looked like you shouldn't be able to see anything out of it!
Anyways, I made it to my guesthouse, which is the perfect word to describe it. It is positively delightful, with a large balcony and a common sitting area which seems to be all mine this weekend.
Franschhoek means "French Corner" and was actually settled by the French...the Protestants left France for Holland and then the Dutch sent them to be settlers here. It is exactly like a little French town, tons of cafes and shops on the one small main road, and surrounded by vineyards. French flags are flying, the names are mostly French, with some Dutch, and it is known as the gastronomical capital of South Africa. When I got my camembert, proscuito, and onion jam sandwich for lunch I knew this was a place I would be happy!
To recover from my stressful drive on the wrong side of the road I walked uphill for about 20 minutes to a winery called Chamoix. I just missed the last tasting, but enjoyed a glass of their 2009 Chardonnay and the view. It was lovely, and the most aggressive glass I have ever seen.
I'm now enjoying the sunset from my balcony and waiting to get hungry again for dinner. I checked out some of the menus on the way home and am hoping to have either ostrich or springbok, which is like a small deer, tonight.
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