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What an incredible weekend away. Friends of ours, Tony and Hilary suggested we go away for a weekend. Rob and I jumped at this and arranged for a 'baby' sitter for the boys and off we went.
The 'baby' sitter was one of the coaches from Chris's school and the boys had a ball with him, going out to eat at Spur etc.
The plan was to go to a house in Riebeek Kasteel that we had hired for the weekend. Tony and Hilary left before us as we went to watch James play a waterpolo match. Before we even left, we got a message from Tony to say that they are no longer going to Riebeek Kasteel but rather going to spend the weekend in Tulbagh. Rob and I were now totally confused and thought they were joking. Only when we actually got to Riebeek did we realize they were being serious and they directed us to our new accommodation in Church Street, Tulbagh.
It turns out the house we had booked was double booked and there was no accommodation in Riebeek due to some festival, but they managed to find the place in Tulbagh. The cottage we stayed in was beautiful and in Church Street, which is the oldest street. All the houses have a history of who built/stayed in them.
http://www.capedutchquarter.co.za/We took no food with us, other than a few snacks and bottles of wine and we ate out for all our meals. We cruised around the wine farms tasting all the delicious wines and campaigns.
One of our meals was at a restaurant called 'Readers'. The owner was a large lady and mad about cats, which made Rob's day, but she was also mad about her homemade ice-creams which she kept raving about and insisting we had to try. So for desert Hilary and I order a trio of ice-creams, well there was curry ice-cream, ginger and lime, and GARLIC. The garlic ice-cream was revolting and actually spoilt a nice meal, the others were just well .... interesting . .
We went to watch the SA vs New Zealand rugby match at the local pub, with some of the locals, that was quite an interesting experience, but half way through I snuk out and went and scratched around the local shops (not that there were many), managed to find a few interesting things.
We did a lot of eating, drinking and sleeping over the weekend, both nights we managed to get over 10 hours of sleep, pure bliss the only thing to worry about was the damn peacocks that made so much noise.
We had a poker set with us, but did not even get to open it we were all so 'chilled'. In fact so chilled that this past week I have really battled at work, it feels like it was months ago that we went away, not a week.
We stopped in at a chocolate factory on the way home, and at the house in Riebeek Kasteel where we were supposed to stay - the house is beautiful and we are very excited as the owner has offered us 1 free weekend away to each couple, so needless to say we will be each be inviting each other to our weekends, so in essence we get 2 weekends away YAY!
All of us eating and drinking and eating some more and drinking some more - happy days!!