Dined and Wined

Today dawned as a sunny morning, but, as the theme thus far on our trip, the sky quickly darkened and the clouds covered the surrounding mountains. We started out the day walking through town and going to the market. We had a very successful shopping trip, marked by Sarah increasing the GDP of South Africa single-handedly, and our running into one of our Algerian friends not once, but twice around town. The word that we were from Chicago passed quickly through the market, reaching the end of the stalls before we even got there.

We then continued on to our lunch, which was another gourmet 4-course meal. The setting was the vineyard Moreson in Franschoek, at a restaurant called Bread and Wine. I think that we all agreed this restaurant topped yesterday's meal - everything was super fresh and delicious. My favorite course was my salad, which was a warm beetroot salad with slices of duck and lentils. My mouth waters just thinking about it - it was sensational! A great addition to the food were some excellent wine flights from the Moreson vineyard.

After lunch, we headed out to do some more wine tasting. Unlike Stellenbosch, which was heavily by the Dutch, Franschoek was heavily influenced by the French, so many of the wineries have French sounding names. We started out by going to Sarah and I's favorite winery from our last trip, Haute Cabriere (a shout-out to Melissa and Johanna here!). Despite our minor disappointment that they did not have the Brandy Champagne we remembered from last time, all of our wines were delicious, and we jumped into the world of wine exportation by sending a case of wine to the US. The Monkeys will get to pick up our wine from the cargo area of O'Hare shortly after their arrival back home! :)

After a another successful wine tasting at le Grande Provencale, we decided to head back to our hotel in Stellenbosch because a) it's Youth Day and a lot of the wineries were closing earlier, and b) we were tired from our copious amounts of wine drinking. We also decided we were not up for another long meal in a restaurant, so we stocked up on wine and dessert at the Pick n Pay, ordered take-away pizza from a local pizzeria, and settled in to watch the big South Africa vs. Uraguay game at our hotel. All I will say is hearts are breaking around South Africa tonight. Poor Bafana Bafana. :( We can only hope the US fairs better when we go to their game vs. Slovenia on Friday.

Tomorrow we head up to Joburg and Friday to our first game. More updates to come...