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Published: December 27th 2008
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Well we had a lovely Christmas dinner last night - G says he hope MIL’s dinner is as nice when we get back and that she has a lot to live up to! When we arrived, there was an African group playing some tunes and we were given champagne to drink on the lawn prior to dinner. As it was a drinking day (it is Christmas!), I carefully examined all the glasses on the tray and selected the fullest. G was amazed as I then was able to navigate us to the only table outside with the burner on. This did G’s chest “stripes” from earlier in the day the world of good. As the waiter came around offering top ups, I was allowed once since it was Christmas so I was super chirpy for the rest of the day - hooray for Santa!
Dinner (or should I say our feast - no pressure mum!) was lovely. We started with all of the following being brought to our table in little dishes (get ready to drool homer) - marinated mushrooms and artichokes, grilled vegetables, prawn beignettes with chilli, game terine with gribiche, charcuterie board and bread! G was in his element.
For our main course G had turkey and beef (and said it was gorgeous) and I had assiette of vegetables, which had a portion of mushroom risotto, a portion of stir fry veg and a portion of asparagus, mange tout and onion - really yummy, together with the potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, potato dauphinoise and malanzane.
During dinner, we also had a guy singing outside for background music for us inside.
Desert was then the following again brought in lots of little plates to the table - plum pudding, trifle. Christmas cake, custard, strawberry and passionfruit pavalova and cheesecake.
As you can imagine, we didn’t need anything else and Homer would have been proud of Gs efforts in polishing most of it off - I must say I did a good job with the custard too!
We then headed back and watched the final spooks on Graboid as our Christmas viewing before bed.
Boxing day was a fairly early start as we were heading down to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope, the most south westernly point of the African continent. Our drive took us through Stellenbosch, the other main wine growing area of the winelands and one
where we were considering staying, however this seemed much more commercialised and larger than Franschoek where we stayed, so we seemed to make the right choice. We stopped en route to make a reservation for a Township tour tomorrow (more about that then) and arrived at Cape Point at about 11am. There was not a cloud in the sky again, so it seemed that lots of South African’s were spending boxing day on the beach because when we got closer to the coast, we saw the beaches getting busier and busier, with everyone carrying their rugs and picnic baskets down towards the beach - I think G was secretly delighted that I had not suggested this too!
Cape Point was fairly busy when we arrived too and we were met with a notice to advise that the funicular was closed for maintenance. The funicular takes tourists up the very steep mountain pass to the lighthouse at the top of the point. This lighthouse, because of its location so high up, was often too dangerously shrouded in cloud and in 1911 the Lusitinia passenger ship sank after hitting the rocks just off the coast . As a result, 1914, a further
lighthouse was built lower down (factual point of the day). The lack of funicular did not put us off however, so we set off water in hand up the path to the lighthouse at the top. The views from the top were spectacular, although I did not look over the side for long! Interestingly, there was also a sign advising us of how far we were from major cities - we were over 10,000km from home (and almost equally as close to Sydney!).
Not being content with our journey to the top, we then headed down the other side of the mountain pass, away from the car, and down towards the new lighthouse. This was right out on the point and you could totally feel the wind hitting you as you got further out - I kept to the middle of the path while G was braver for the photos! After the incidents at the safari park, I thought it was the least he could do! The light in the lighthouse at the bottom was the strength of 10million candles and can be seen up to 63 kilmetres out to sea and flashes 3 times every 30 seconds (second factual
points of the day). After a small rest at the bottom, we trecked back u p to the top lighthouse and then back down to the bottom.
There was a restaurant at the bottom, so we decided on having some lunch here after our exertions before heading to the Cape of Good Hope (we got a great table - half in the sun for me and half in the shade for G and they even had no alcohol beer - so G is still carting around the one in his bag for the day!).
The Cape of Good Hope was only about a 2km drive down towards the sea from the Point. Many people believe this is where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet (and you would think so due to the crashing waves), however this is actually further along the coast towards Hermanus, where we stayed last week. We sat watching the waves, getting sprayed even about 20 metres back, before heading back towards Cape Town as we wanted to hand our hire car back that evening due to our township tour at 8.30am the following day.
My directions again were brilliant (navigator of the year i think) and
I took us right to the hotel door. After a swift check in, we headed to take the car back to the city centre drop off point. Unfortunately, when we arrived, it had closed early due to it being Boxing Day, and the alternative drop off point noted on the shop door next to the Sheraton hotel had closed last year (we found this out when we drove down). Not very happy (especially as the schedule for the day would be broken), we decided to head back to the airport with the car, ready to express our disappointment as we would now have to find our own way back to the city. However, when we arrived the hire guys were really apologetic and one of them drove us straight back to our hotel door - so we were quite happy in the end as it saved us another long walk back from the city drop off point, and we were back on schedule for the day!
We are now about to head along to the V&A waterfront for dinner, at an Italian I found on the internet before we arrived - hope my selection turns out to be good again!
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