Red, red wine...

Hey friends and colleagues. Quick update before bed. Today, Suvrat, Dag, and I went on a winery tour of the towns of Stellenbosch and Frensch Hoek (also, French Hoek, and a variety of other spellings). Joining us were Dag and Suvrat's friends, Vania and Christina, two of the International Peace Studies grad students from Notre Dame. Our first stop was at a winery in Stellenbosch, the name of which I never actually saw or heard. We got there around 9 am, before it was truly opened, so we just showed ourselves around the farm, and did some hiking.

In an interesting turn of events, there was a wedding at the winery today. We noticed the white chairs that were lined up when we first got there, but really thought nothing of it. When we were getting ready to leave, however, they had the area set up in full-on wedding mode. We were hoping to see part of the wedding, but alas, we had an 11am booking at another winery.

That other winery is called Boschendal. Dag met one of the employees of the winery at the Executive MBA dinner we attended a few weeks back, so this guy arranged for us to have a wine tour and tasting at his expense. The winery there was beautiful (not as beautiful as Groote Constantia, but still amazing). The wine tasting was also good. Everyone else bought a bottle of wine to take home and bring back to the states (not me, my allotted travel-liquid is being used for Amarula, yum).

After we left Boschendal, we made our way to the small town of French Hoek. This was recommended to me by one of the Ikamva management members, Karen Miller. The town was really interesting; it has a very distinct French flavor (gee, Will, I wonder why they named it French Hoek?), which is unique to where we have been here in Africa. We spent our time there seeing the shops and having lunch, and then we made our way back to Cape Town. I'll put up some pictures sometime soon. All in all, it was a good, relaxing day. Well everyone, I'm off to bed. I'm not going to work for the next two days while Matt is in Namibia, so I'm going to enjoy sleeping in for a bit. Totsien!