Woke at 7.30am. Felt a lot better for my temperature breaking overnight.
Breakfast at 8.30am. Katharine and Arthur do the best breakfast ever! Home made granola and yoghurt. Home made fruit smoothie. Fruit platter with about 20 different type of fruit on it - apparently they like to compete to see how many they can put on the plate. I didn't know the names of about 5 of the fruit. Good strong coffee. Dried fruits soaked in syrup and spices. Then they send out hot croissants, spiced buns (hot cross buns) and toast. With gorgeous preserves from Hillcrest Berry Farm. We loved the Cape Gooseberry jam.
http://www.hillcrestberries.co.za/HILLCREST%20BERRY%20ORCHARDS.html
When Katharine and Arthur ask if you want eggs and bacon, it is very tempting, as you know they'll be good. But the answer has to be no - because after what you've already eaten, you just can't manage another mouthful.
Afer breakfast, we took a walk round the village. Or should I say down the High Street as the village is spread along a 1.5km road. It's lovely - lots of shops, restaurants (there are 36 in the whole Franschhoek area) and then the Hugenot Memorial and plenty of churches. Today a great gathering of bikers was in town.
Next, we drove up to Boschendal for a walk in the beautiful gardens.
http://www.boschendal.com/
I'm going to have to be careful about how often I use the word "stunning" to describe things. But Boschendal was. Parked under the trees outside the house, was a line of Vintage Cobra cars. Must have been a Cobra owners day out, as there was a large group of people sitting in the cafe when we walked past.
Then we drove back toward Franschhoek and called into Hillcrest Berry farm for some jam. We also bought some cherry and aniseed chutney - apparently it goes well with blue cheese.
After that we pulled off the main road into Graham Beck wine estate for a tasting.
We'd taken quite a liking to the Graham Beck Sauvignon Blanc we'd tried and also the champagne they made. Actually, it isn't called champagne as the French have ownership of that. It is called Methode Cap Classique or Methode Champenoise. Graham Beck is a state of the art wine estate. In the tasting room you can see right into the production area (bottling and packing). Unfortunately, it being Sunday, nobody was working there.
http://www.grahambeckwines.com/
We proved once and for all that we're cheap by both preferring, of all 5 wines we tried, the cheapest Sauvignon Blanc. So we bought a couple of bottles to take to Durban with us. Graham Beck was unusual in that they will let you taste the expensive wines - most tasting rooms only give samples of the low-mid price ranges. So I took advantage and tried their most expensive red. It was nice, but I have to say I did not tell much difference from a mid priced bottle. Where I had noticed a difference (in Chamonix the day before) was the taste of the low price bottle compared to the mid price. Maybe I do have some taste after all.
We were booked in to La Petite Ferme for 1.30pm. by the time we arrived the place was full - booking IS essential here. Our table had wonderful views over the Franschhoek Valley - and guess what? The sun was out! No rain today. It was actually very pleasant.
The food? Well it was ok. I can't say it was excellent, but I think the overall "Petite Ferme" experience just has to be tried when in Franschhoek.
Starters: Jan had Ricepaper stuffed with blue cheese, pear, pecan, mint & herb dressing. Good, but the rice paper was totally unnecessary I felt. Roy had mini mozzarella (bocconcini) with roast carrots, caraway seed, tomato dressing and mixed leaves. Great bread.
Mains: Jan - Roast loin of pork with ginger, plum and cinnamon compote. This was great. The accompanying porcini, potato and chestnut cake was cold and unnecessary. Roy - rabbit stew with polenta and wilted greens. Also good... very garlicky! Great side order of roasted veggies. Bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. Dessert was the real let down. We ordered "crespelle" (cold crepe/pancake) filled with banana and marscapone and chocolate sauce. It just did not work at all. We took our coffee outside into the beautiful gardens and sat and watched it all go by for a little while... it was by now really warm outside.
Next we drove up Franschhoek Pass. So pretty and with superb views of the village. We saw baboons a plenty up there, too.
For this evening we have in mind that we need to find a place where we can just get some cheese, bread and wine to eat. We strolled around the village between 5-6pm and realised that most places here are actually proper restaurants. Whilst lots of menus looked great, after that lunch we could not face a full meal. So we decided to call in at Pick and Pay and buy some cheese and bread, and crack open one of our Chamonix Cab Savs to drink with it.
Walking around the village we noticed a memorial fountain that had been funded by Arthur Mc William Smith (our host at Akademie Street Guest Houses). Later we read in a guide that he'd had this done in memory of a son who went missing whilst travelling in Europe back in 1994. Back home, I also found out that Arthur is an ex-Mayor of Franschhoek and has been instrumental in building the village to its current position of "gourmet capital of SA".
So tonight we stayed in. We lit the patio heater and sat out eating our cheese platter and bread. We also had some choc chip cookies (we bought them in Cape Town one day and the bag was huge) and finished with Amarula and coffee.
Roy watched a noisy movie on tv while I read up on our next destination - Wilderness.
