Merry Christmas

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After waking up this Christmas morning, a quick look out the window showed another fabulous day - not a cloud in the sky. A little different from our normal Christmas mornings!
After opening all of our presents that we brought with us - about 25 between us! - we headed downstairs and out onto the hotel balcony for breakfast. We were greeted by staff in Santa hats - a nice touch to give us the Christmas feeling. Even though this was only 9am, it was already boiling hot!
After breakfast, we headed down to the loungers by the pool, and had a lovely relaxing 2 hours by the pool and G (previously known as patch) can now be called stripe! We then headed back up to the room for the Christmas phone calls to our respective parents - but too early for them to have opened their presents yet!
After the calls, we headed back for another hour by the pool before heading over to the Mont Rochelle winery for our picnic lunch that we had booked.
When we arrived, we found that the winery was also open for tastings, so G got himself propped onto the stool for the tasting. Unlike yesterday, as we had planned to spend the afternoon having a leisurely picnic, there was no using of the spittoon bucket. The verdict was nice white wines - but the reds not quite as good as yesterday at Fairview! So, G decided on purchasing the house special bottle of white wine and it arrived in a presentation box - wonder where this will go!?
After the tasting, we were presented with our picnic hamper, cool box and picnic mat. This was really cool - we both had breads, salad, cheese and pudding, while I had tomato pasta (no garlic of course!) and G had a selection of cold meats. We took the hamper and rug down onto the lawn in front of the vineyard, chose our spot with a lovely view (and a tree nearby for shade for stripe) and tucked into our picnic and a bottle of ega (one less for the case - down to 8 now!). The picnic was lovely and afterwards we played a game of cards (couldn’t have Christmas Day without a game for G) and then had a small nap in the sun - a little different to a nap on the sofa after eating too much!
We headed back to our hotel just after 4pm to get ready for our Christmas Dinner (and champagne for me - woohoo!) at Grande Provence, a very highly regarded restaurant within another vinery in Franschhoek. Will report back on dinner in tomorrow’s blog - but looking forward to it!

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