Becoming a wine connoisseur in a day...

Hi readers! What a day we had. We woke up feeling ready for some exercise, so decided to rent bikes. This town, Franschoek, is beautiful and the perfect place to explore via bike. We rode down the country roads past many wineries and accidentally ventured into a very bad part of town. Other than this one corner of the town it is one of the best stops yet. The town itself is on a few main streets, with vineyards all around. Beyond the vineyards are steep mountains, the views in every direction are just amazing. Will try to get to a Internet cafe in the next day to upload some photos.

Anyway, after our bike ride we headed to Boschendal Vineyard, about 15k away from where we are staying. This vineyard was amazing... We had then most incredible lunch there, a buffet with delicious meats, fresh veggies, and other delights. I should mention that we have been trying to avoid water here, including vegetables washed in water, ice, and anything else that may have touched water... This is a tough task and results in a serious lack of nutritious foods. With our lunch we also had a great blanc de noir, a very popular rose wine here. After lunch we did the renowned Boschendal wine tasting and pretended to be very sophisticated while tasting about 5 different wines.

After returning to our hotel we hopped back on the bikes and rode to another vineyard, called Chamonix. We were first turned away and told we were too late, but Sam batted his eyelashes and they made an exception for us. We had also biked up a ridiculously long and steep hill and were seriously sweaty, so I think they felt badly for us. We tried s fantastic pinotage, a special south African varietal, as well as some white wine and an apertif. Yum! I was in a very good mood riding DOWN the hill... What an amazing view!

Sam here... Next we rode a few miles to Mont Rochelle vineyards, and we found a new favorite view and some new favorite wine. I'm pretty sure Caitlin declared each place we stopped her favorite view and each vineyard we tried to be the new favorite. The best wine at Mont Rochelle was called Miko, named after the owners who were the first black owners of a vineyard in SA. We had another good cruise downhil from this hillside vineyard on our bikes before hitting the hotel pool. We Tried the local pizza at an outdoors restaurant for dinner. Also had a Caprese salad (mozzarella, tomato, basil) with olives which was awesome. Had never seen olives included in this before but I recommend it.

naturally Sam talked a lot about the food... Anyway, we had a really great day eating and drinking our way through this gorgeous town. We're looking forward to our next adventures in Cape Town!

Lots of love
C&S