Stellenbosch and Wine Tour

Wednesday December 8th.

Got up early, picked up my laundry, had breakfast, blogged and then Gwyneth came to pick me up for our day tour of Stellenbosch and the wine district.

The ride out of town was very interesting because we drove past various housing districts for whites, coloured and then the townships, which are the slums, mostly inhabited by blacks.

We took a driving tour of the old historic town of Stellenbosch, which was originally inhabited by the Dutch. Then we drove out into the country and visited four wineries. The area is beautiful with mountains all around. The first winery was really old (top two pictures) and hasn't been changed much, including the spiderwebs on the windows! Another was an old 1750's farm mansion. The other two were more modern. The wines were yummy (you know how much of a wine expert I'm not!). We didn't drink too much, because it was early and Gwyneth had to drive!

Then we went for a drive to the french area (sorry can't remember the name) and had a great lunch sitting outside in the shade. I had a moghul pizza, sort of Indian chicken, corriader and yogurt, among other things. After lunch we visited two other wineries. The third picture is from the second last and is the most modern with windows into the automatic bottling and labelling area.

Finally we drove back to Stellenbosch for a walking tour. The town is a quaint university town and has lots of attractive colonial era buildings. We stopped and had a delicious ice cream and then Gwyneth drove me back to Capetown. The end of a great day.

In the evening I relaxed, blogged, read and went to bed early to try to catch up on my sleep.