So, day 3. Started off with a morning breakfast served by the lady of the house. Judy made us some delicious cheese sconces and fresh bread. We also got a little taste of home when she introduced us to her pug, Olive! That was a lot of fun. Much different from Robo, but it still reminds us of home.
We planned to spend the day out in Stellenbosch, which is a big city for wine in South Africa. We headed out for the train station with a little direction from Judy, who was surprised that we were taking the train. She said that she had never done that before which made me feel a little worried. We pressed on however and caught our first train towards Cape Town City Bowl. Strangely enough, we haven't been there yet, and might not go until we head there for the World Cup game.
Our first adventure of the day was trying to figure out how to use the trains and how to know what train to get on. I'm still not sure we know how to use them, but we asked around and were directed to the right one. After we got to our first transfer station, we found out that they had canceled one of the trains out to Stellenbosch, so we had to end up waiting for the next one to come about one hour later.
We finally got on the train and had a really good train ride! After about 5 stops on the train, we were the only ones left in our cab so we opened a lot of the windows and were looking out like happy dogs in a car. We got some good pictures of the mountains and wine country (again, pictures still to come!).
Once we got to Stellenbosch, we decided to ask a "tour guide" what our best option would be for wine hopping. Unfortunately, either they misunderstood them or we misunderstood them because they ended up giving us directions to a restaurant. So instead of following those directions, we started walking our own direction looking for stuff the map pointed out to us. Luckily for us, after about 10 minutes of walking, a nice hotel manager came running up to us. He told us that he had seen us struggling from his window and thought he'd come see if we needed some help. There are some really nice people out here!
We were directed to a wine tour place where they called up a couple of tours so that we could try to get on them. We ended up catching the second part of a day tour with Niel and 2 Dutch couples. Niel took us to lunch first where Ank and I had some REALLY good chicken pie. Spicer and Jennifer had some Grandma's Bootie ;) and Brian had some fried fish. All the food was really delicious. Probably the best meal I've had so far.
Niel took us to three different wineries. He explained to us how they made all the wine and why each winery was so special and unique. We went to Tokara, then Graham Beck, and finally Solms. We picked up a couple of wines that don't import to the US and a wine that we really liked the name to: "Cape Jazz Shiraz". Jenn had fun repeating this MULTIPLE times.
Our guide offered to take us back to town since the Dutch couple was already asking for a ride, so we took him up on it. He dropped us off right at our door! Again, what nice people here! From the house, we decided we were going to take the train to Observatory, a neighborhood closer to the City Bowl, and watch the South Africa game with Tessa. Unfortunately, when we got to the train station, we found out that the train station was closed at 6:30 (it was almost 8 by that point). We decided that we would then try to catch a cab up to there. We walked all the way back to the house without signs of a cab and decided that we would call one from the house. When we asked to use the phone, however, Judy told us that she would just take us because it would be faster and cheaper. So we took her up on the offer.
Once at the Observatory we watched South Africa get screwed multiple times and came away really upset with that game. We caught a cab back to the house and planned our next day before we went to sleep.
That's all folks!
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