A Taste of Wine Country.

Yesterday, in the morning, we looked at a duplex 3-bedroom cottage for rent in Observatory, near the train. The front yard was nice, with an electric gate, trees (a frangipani!), grass, and a garage; but when we walked in, I could smell cigarettes and incense. My nose is so sensitive; I’d probably be smelling it for months after we moved in. It was unfurnished and no appliances (boo!), and most concerningly (new word), no alarm system (although it did have window bars). They gave us the Observatory neighborhood paper, the ObsLife, which said that out of the 4 neighborhoods that the local police station policed, it was not longer number one in crime! Scary. We left feeling wishy-washy about it and I think we’ve decided to pass but it was very helpful to see a home and what we might expect to get. I think we will keep looking. Luckily, we are not desperate yet, but finding a “pet friendly” home with a yard will be hard…

After regrouping, we went to the Western Cape Getaway Show and met up with a family from Tucson. There was a Groupon for it (its called either Twangoo or MyCityDeal here), but we didn’t decide in time to buy the coupon. It was in Somerset West, in the wine country. It was so beautiful! As we were driving I took a picture of the rows of grapevines – at the end of the rows, there was a plant with alternating red or white flowers. I wish I had more pictures, but somebody forgot to charge the camera.

Beautiful!

Fake bull, fake saguaro, real kid.

We stood in line for at least half an hour to get a beef burger (could have had chicken or ostrich), which was surprisingly good and made up for the wait. We sat on a slope of grass eating and talking, then went to find some libations. I tasted two beers, but rejected both (P got an Ale), so I decided to get wine from the estate we were on, Lourensford Wine Estate. I had to buy the whole bottle of rosé (oh darn!) and rented a glass for a deposit of R20 (which I got back later). We walked around and looked at different companies’ offerings (camping, travel trailers, etc.) and watched the Isuzu off-road demonstrations. There were a lot of kid-friendly stuff, like a fake bull ride with blow-up saguaros! There was also a mini-bungee-like thing where they were attached with rubber straps at the hips and they bounced on a trampoline very high in the air, a kid’s rock climbing wall, and a thing where kids went inside a clear plastic blow-up ball and then floated/ran in a pool of water, trying to bump into other kids. It looked fun. Someone described the kids coming out of it as as “loopy” because the only air they had to breathe was in the ball! Then we tried some honey liqueur in mini chocolate cups- very alcoholly (another new word) but yummy; I think I could only take it in small doses though.

We drove home and watched Date Night (better than we thought it would be) and Bad Company (not as bad as you would think for having Chris Rock and Anthony Hopkins). We finished off the rosé and cooked a chicken pasta for dinner.

All in all it was a great day.

Song of the day: Sunshine on My Shoulders by John Denver,