Day 10: Paarl and surroundings

Today we woke up to a cloudy morning and the temperature was also cooler. We started the day at the Taal monument, next to the Paarl Mountain Nature Reserve. The monument commemorates the Afrikaans language and can be spotted from almost anywhere in Paarl.

Apart from the monument Joakim and I had set our minds on a walk. We sent Gun and Calle off to a new vineyard, the Fairway Estate and found a circular walk that looked nice. As it turned out we had not made ourselves understood in the reception, so when we were going to enter the reserve through a gate we did not have the right key to open it. We walked back and were directed in a different way, but that circular walk was much shorter than the one we had planned to do. L Once we got back well ahead of our meeting time we bought ice tea and sat down among some 60 school children visiting the monument and made plans for our next few days in Cape Town. While doing so the weather cleared and the sun came out for the day.

Gun and Calle arrived and were very happy with their visit at Fairway, where they had tasted wine and goat cheese. We decided to drive to Stellenbosch for a visit at Spier – a vineyard and hotel complex where we stayed in 2014. 

We walked around the park, visited the craft market (an “off season” version compared to what we remembered), had tea/coffee in the garden and went for a last wine tasting. We tasted five wines and I did enjoy the Chenin Blanc and the Chardonnay/Pinot Noir (rosé). :)

After Spier we drove back to the Diamant Estate and rested, as wine tasting is a demanding vacation activity – at least for beginners like me. Despite this we actually visited yet another estate, Laborie, where Gun and Calle treated us for dinner at their restaurant called “Harvest at Laborie”. Again, a nice meal to close a nice day!