Day 17 of this glorious trip of a lifetime found us both very wore out from day before. Probably a culmination of all the days before, but we are blaming it on the sharks. The plan for the day was to head to wine country, check out a car museum, and eat some lunch at some esteemed and well recognized restaurant. Everything was planned in advance to be a full day trip, but since we were pretty much already spent and wanted to have a half day to ourselves, we opted for a shorter guided tour.
We were picked up at 1000 SAST by our driver and headed up the road to Paarl, where our first stop was Glen Carlou. This establishment was very well known around the South African nation, as well as all over the world, such as Argentina and the US. We were to have five samples each at Glen Carlou, where Kathy opted for the more sweet chilled wines and I went for the ones that were the most expensive and rated the best, which were most of the darker red wines. Since we are far from wine snobs, er I mean connoisseurs, we had the sommelier tell us about the wine and just shook our head like we liked it. I didn't have any issues with any of the wines that I tasted as well as any of Kathy's too
After leaving the winery, we headed for the Franschhoek Car Museum, which Anthonij Rupert put together out of his car collection. The collection, as explained by a couple of the employees, was said to have around 220 cars in total, which only 80 were on display at any one time. Each of the four buildings had 20 cars in it each, as well as peddle cars, bicycles, engines, and other car related items. There were five full time mechanics that kept the cars in running condition so they could be started up and ran periodically and moved with ease. My first impression - wow! There were cars from Model T’s, Model A’s, Mercedes, Ferrari, IRL, Mustang, and even a Honda NSX (which we know as Acura makes now). I took photos like a kid in a candy store, though the photos were just snapshots due to the close security and ropes guarding the collection. Still, it was awesome! Franshhhoek was also a winery and eatery, but we did not partake in any of that, but did look around.
After leaving the car museum, we headed for lunch, which was a nice vineyard, restaurant, and suites called La Petite Ferme, Again, we had R250 to spend on lunch, which equated to around $37.50 US. You might not think that is very much, but when a 10oz beef filet only costs R100, its a pretty good deal (do the math). After spending around an hour, both having fillets, beers, some cheese, and soup, we paid our R700 ($52.50US) for a 4 course meal and drink, we headed back to Cape Town. This trip took an exceptional long time to get back since N1 was backed up for quite a long ways due to a car vs motorcycle accident. I didn't like the scene so decided not to post anything about it. It wasn't good.
After getting home, we chilled out on the patio at our temporary home imbibing some beers (so we didn't have any left) and relaxed. The plan was to go to Brian's Pub for the seventh straight night for a going away party that we created in order to have our friends all join us. We took off and went to the ATM since we were out of Rand, picked up our laundry (so we wouldn't have any laundry to do when we got home and it was cheap), and headed to our favorite beer drinking spot to say “until next time” (instead of good byes) since we think we are going back! Photos were taken, hugs and kisses were given (Kathy did the kissing, since they were mostly all guys) and we recapped our trip on what we did, what we wanted to do but didn’t, and when we might make the trip again.
After a few beers, we all knew the time was was near, Marc and I engaged in a conversation about gridiron again. I was wearing my KC Chiefs shirt of course, since they played the Donkeys that night, and Marc said he wished he had a shirt like mine. So, I went out and grabbed a fresh shirt from the laundry visit and took the Chiefs shirt off and handed it too him. You would have thought that I gave him $100US… You see, I was intentional about bringing Royals and Chiefs shirts over, so I could give them to new found friends as mementos of the US. However, Marc was the first to even seem interested in baseball or gridiron/football, which made me finally pleased that my thoughts were in line on the t-shirt deal. We took some final cell phone photos of each other, some solo, some in a group, and parted ways. Our big day was upon us - the dreaded last day of the trip, which was a day plus of travel back to the heartland. Bittersweet day, but we expected none the less.
Tour route: https://goo.gl/maps/Q9fsv14gc682
Great photos thanks Rob and Kathy! Was lovely meeting you guys! Hope you will grace our shores again! xxx
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