AMAZING long-weekend in Stellenbosch

So I arrived back last night after such a much-needed stunning brilliant 4 days with some of my bestest friends in the whole world. We arrived Wednesday eve, feeling very tired but SO excited. Needless to say we stayed up until 2h30 am chatting. Thursday was beach day in Cape Town... we went to Clifton beach and the weather was SUPERB. It also wasn't too busy and everything was just perfect. Sun, sea, sand, laughter, pizza.... wish we had more time for more beach visits or an entire beach holiday! Thurs eve we had supper at a wine bar in Stellenbosch called Brampton, where we had such cheap and amazing eats and drinks.

On Friday we had brunch in town at a bakery with a Netherlands/historical theme in a VERY old bank building, Schoon De Companje, I had bread, pesto, olive tapenade and brie... YUMMYNESS... afterwards we went to the wine farm Vrede en Lust, where we did our first wine tasting. It was lovely and I bought 2 bottles of rather expensive 2008 wines for my 7 year lungaversary supper (2008 is the yr I got the lungs... obviously). In the evening we met up with Louzanne at a moonlight market (although the market wasn't too fantastic, but  seeing Louzanne WAS). Glad I got to see her and Wouter as well!

Saturday we set off to the wine-lands again, and this time started with beer tasting at the Spice Route. It was nice but not as great as the wine! This was followed by more amazing food. We were invited for supper at my friend Ditha's parents, who I haven't seen for like 10 years. Great company, great food and the cutest dogs EVER... Zorro and Ginger. We even took them for a short walk. Another AMAZING day.

Sunday unfortunately arrived as well.... we packed up all our stuff, and went to a market called Root 44 that we heard was amazing. It did not disappoint, with SO MUCH of delicious food and cool crafts. Had breakfast, shopped for some xmas gifts, followed by more food..... dessert! We felt that we needed to add some more tasting experinces to our trip, and decided to do champagne tasting at JC Le Roux. Unfortunately they were fully booked, so we just drank champagne (well sparkling wine) in the restaurant. From there it was all sadness and going to the airport :-(

So glad we were lucky enough to do this. Even though I'm working through December with no more holidays in sight, at least I had these 4 days of heaven with the type of friends who you can LITERALLY just be yourself with (I will spare you the detail but let's just say we were very comfortable and relaxed!). So here are the "then and now" pics (had to do 2 "then" pics to get everyone in), and a quote that sums up the whole weekend perfectly. Proof that you can look better in your 30's than in your 20's (and... in my case, have better lungs)!

I will post more pics in the next post.

And then.....