It was nice to be on unstructured time with the safari over, which had been very structured. There’s lots to do over the next few days but we feel no urgency to do it all; this will be our vacation from the safari before we have to enter the real world later in the week.

I was up after 4am and worked on the blog over decent hotel coffee. I was almost done when Ash got up and we went down to breakfast soon after. Typical breakfast buffet – with mushroom and pork-n-beans of course; nothing to write home about :)

The weather sort of matched our mood and gave us permission to be lazy. It was raining pretty hard when we got here the night before. It had stopped raining, but the forecast said it would be cloudy all day, and it pretty much was. Still, we had an interesting industrial view out our 3rd floor window.

The only real agenda item was to go to Franschhoek, both a town and a region about 40 miles east of Cape Town. Think Napa Valley, but mountains instead of hills and more diversity. In addition to wines, they are famous for cheese, jams, olives.

We stopped at Dalewood Fromage, who has won several regional and world-wide cheese contests. We bought some harder cheeses that would travel home well.

I asked Ash to pull over to take this shot: a cemetery off the side of the road, with a layer of houses behind it which are nestled up to the mountains.

We stopped at Franschhoek Cellars – established 1693! – because of their reputation for cheese tasing (at least per google). Side note from Ash: real lions in the wild are about that size.

We weren’t disappointed! And got cappuccinos to go with it.

Ash picked out some wine to take home as gifts.

We walked the town of Franschhoek a bit, having time to kill before our 1pm lunch reservations.

Remember from early entries when we were in Johannesburg, most of South Africa was developed by European colonists. Much of this area was established by the Huguenots, Protestants from France who in this case were fleeing due to religious persecution.  They first built a church at this location in 1694. The current version was built in 1845.

You can tell it’s Protestant by the simple art and the lack of a crucifix.

We went to La Petite Ferme for lunch, a place Ash had eaten at in 2015.

It’s known for great views – as shown here – and great food. Lived up to its reputation on both counts.

You get a 3-course meal for about $30. How can you say no? This warm bread and butter with salt doesn’t count as a course!

Ash had a burrata dish for starters, I had a beetroot carpaccio below.

Look, Greg Wine: a palate cleanser! Orange and ginger sorbet.

Ash had trout, I had springbok below. First time I had it cooked! You may recall I got springbok carpaccio twice when we were at The Four Seasons in Johannesburg. This was very good and not gamey like the venison I’ve had in the US.

This was Ash’s dessert. They called it bread pudding but was more like a banana muffin. With hazelnut ice cream. He loves all things hazelnut; me not so much.

I had a lemon tartlet with vanilla ice cream. We were so full after this we didn’t eat again until a very light dinner at the hotel around 8pm.

We drove up to the Franschhoek Pass, elevation about 2500 feet, and got this lovely view of the valley. This road was the first “properly engineered” road developed in South Africa. It followed trails, at least according to legend, first carved out by elephants.

We made it back to the hotel about 4pm, dropped stuff off in the room and headed out for a walk to the Victoria & Afred Waterfront (they loved Queen Victoria around here, clearly.) Alfred is one of her sons, who began construction of the waterfront. (It took us MUCH longer than it should have to realize it was Alfred and not Albert.)  This is a canal we picked up just behind our hotel and followed it to the main drag. That’s where we’re staying in the backgound: AC Hotels Marriott.

We came across a skate park with downtown and Table Moutain behind it.

Statues honoring 4 Nobel Peace Prize Laureates from South Africa: Nikosi Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, FW De Klerk, and Nelson Mandela.

There’s a huge mall here with lots of restaurants. We weren’t even a bit hungry and no need to shop; we just used it as a shortcut to walk through on our way back.

Another beautiful sunset in Africa. Although Table Mountain, below, was essentially behind us, it had some nice colors at sunset, too.

And this sunset came with sound effects! Courtesy of the Atlantic Ocean.

There was a literal frame constructed here suggesting this was a good photo opportunity, so of course I couldn’t resist this shot of the Waterfront, with downtown and Table Mountain in the background. I thought it would be too dark but it turned out OK.

While I was doing that, Ash was chatting with a couple of women who offered to take a photo of us. We like it!