We headed back to our room to lie like beached whales on the bed with Bloomberg in the background, letting our bodies deal with even more food. We decided not to do anything at all that day - a real holiday day. I called my mother in Sydney to see how things were there and make her jealous about my holiday (in a nice but evil way). Sydney is going through a heatwave as well, so she was suffering greatly. Not as much as her cat of course, who is rather fluffy at the best of times, but when the temperature gets over 40 degrees wearing a fur coat clearly is not ideal.
We finally decided to see a little more of Franschhoek, so took a very hot, slow walk to the main road and to the local wine shop, past the lovely Franschhoek houses and site of last night's food blowout.
It has a lovely cellar - very atmospheric and some lovely bottles of good stuff...
Then down to an antique shop that specialises in... corkscrews. Appropriate for the district of course, but when there is a corkscrew that costs over £3,000 (from the 1700s) I think things are getting a little out of hand. I went straight to the bookshelves of course, and if we hadn't had wine to smuggle back already, I would have bought a few of the books. Some great old examples of books on South African history and participation in the great wars which were fascinating. We did buy one book for R85 however which was Boswells London Diary, a diary of the young Scotsman on an extended trip to London which was very amusing. SS found one passage where the young Boswell picks up a prostitute and "takes" her on Westminster Bridge which just shows the differences between London then and now. You would get run over attempting something like that, probably by crowds of foreign tourists...
I was determined to try to get some colour on this holiday, and SS always has that at the front of his mind, so we went back to Akademie Street and changed to lie by the pool. We walked back and I took some photos of the usual minibus loads of people outside Pick n Pay,
and then the houses in Franschhoek (including Whale Cottage - a B&B with a very cute availability sign...).
We stayed out in the sun for a few hours, me reading the Forsyte Saga again, SS trying to concentrate on Fool's Gold but giving up and just lying happily with the sun baking down on him.
We were booked in for dinner at Mange Tout at Mont Rochelle just outside town, and SS decided he really should have a run first. It was still very hot, but he was determined. I had no intention of doing anything energetic at all. So I lay on the bed reading my book and snoozing, and he headed out down the road towards Stony Brook. He got back about 40 minutes later, a bit grey and no longer sweating. Yep - a light case of sunstroke. After a warm shower, he lay on the bed drinking juice and having some salty crisps to try to restore the balance in his body, but really was a silly thing to do.
Luckily there was some light relief on television - whilst he napped I watched Flushed Away and in the warm afternoon with the airconditioning on it was all very pleasant really.
We got up, dressed for dinner, and headed down to Sombrero. The drive to Mont Rochelle only takes about 5 minutes, and after signing in at the gatehouse we drove up to the lovely thatched main building.
We were seated near the window, and got to watch the sunset. That was when I discovered that my camera had gone wrong, and the card was corrupted. Sigh... Luckily SS reminded me that I had my blackberry, so I was able to take some food photos with that. But terrible quality of course.
We each chose the 3 course option, and settled in. The ambience was lovely - they had a pianist playing for the evening as well which was charming, he had a full repertoire of Frank Sinatra and other songs of a similar era. A bit of Andrea Boccelli, Rolling Stones, Queen and so on. I recognised about90% of the songs, SS was amazed as he is usually the music buff but light, elevator style music is not his forte clearly.
An amuse bouche arrived first which was a quail and rabbit cottage pie in effect - quite filling and large really, but nice flavours.
Then our starters arrived. I had had the asparagus option, which was a chilled soup, with truffle oil, and a side salad of asparagus spears, goats cheese, tiny little radish leaves and slices which was very fresh and light - delicious. Even SS agreed and was happy to have two tastes of it.
He had the parsley risotto to start with, with a scoop of parsley sorbet, and some deep fried mozarella and parmesan. Very filling again, but he said it was nice.
Now we had another amuse bouche, this time a basil and mint sorbet which was very refreshing. Served in a wine glass tho, so rather style over ease of access - I hate eating out of tall glasses.
Mains arrived - I had kingklip with chorizo and peppers which looked lovely and colourful but was actually too salty really.
SS did better with skate with a butter sauce and tomatoes.
Then the dessert - I opted for a dessert-y dessert for a change, and had pumpkin seed ice cream with fresh berries and jelly which was absolutely delicious and light and fresh.
SS had the cheeseboard which he said was a bit French (he is not a fan of French cheese).
We were absolutely stuffed, but the petit fours arrived with the bill. Reminded me of the setup at Tom Aikens, and we felt we had to give them a go. SS took the opportunity to visit the loo at this stage, so I took the opportunity to take a bite out of each of the truffles etc, just for research purposes of course.
When he came back it looked like a mouse had got into the chocolate box. SS had a try of a few of the things as well - they were nice but really I am not in the mood for heavy sweet things after a big dinner. Unlie the Tasting Room however, we did not get a beautifully wrapped "doggie box".
The only negative about the setting was the size of the table - it was huge and so to have a conversation one had to lean right over as despite the piano playing the atmosphere was quite subdued so shouting would have been a little out of place. But the atmosphere and temperature was much better than at the Tasting Room, even if the food was not at the same level.
After dinner we went along to the bar which we had eyed the previous afternoon, and settled in for an after dinner drink. SS had a glass of the Boekenhoutskloof dessert wine, I had a shot of Amarula on ice. We settled into the comfy sofa inside and had a lovely time for about 15 minutes until Derek and Trev arrived behind us. Trev (he loudly announced to the quiet, stylish bar) had been drinking for 36 hours. His friend Derek was nowhere near as drunk, but both of their wives were looking for an escape route. They quickly left and headed to bed, leaving the poor bartender to deal with Trev, who couldn't work out what to drink at this point. We finished up, and decided to head home as the ambience was certainly challenged now by the chavs, and after leaving the barman a nice tip, headed out to the car. I was aware that I had had a couple of glasses of wine and an Amarula over about 3 hours, but felt pretty OK and the car really only had to roll down the hill and turn left to get us home again. We got there easily and unscathed, and headed up to our lovely room. We relaxed for a while, with the prospect of having to leave lovely Franschhoek the next day for the next leg to Swellendam (our stop off point to Storms River...).
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