Our first full day in the Cape arrived with the Sun and after a nourishing breakfast we called for an Uber (incredibly cheap here!) and headed out to the neighboring town of Constantia some five miles up the road. Famous for it's vineyards and wines Constantia is a affluent leafy suburb containing many posh houses and old cape wineries; we were visiting friends who had lived there since the late nineties and who we hadn't seen for at least a decade. It was an interesting journey as I'd stayed in Constantia myself back in 1991 for a month over Christmas and I recognized some of the landmarks and road names, although the place has grown a fair bit since I was last here!
We arrived at our friend's house and immediately all agreed that no one had changed a jot in the last ten years! It was really nice to catch up and hear about their lives since we last met and after a few drinks we headed out to a local cafe for a quick bite of lunch and then back to their house to laze around by their pool in the sun for a couple of hours, drinking cold white wine, chewing the fat about holidays, and of course, gossiping about mutual friends.
After leaving our friends and having agreed to meet up with them again at the end of our tour we retired for an early dinner at our hotel restaurant where we had some great food and an interesting, and tasty, Barbera from Idiom (a Somerset West based winery) total bill for food and wine came to a very satisfying £35, I can see why our friends decided to settle down here!
Our hotel was set in beautiful gardens and grounds with a fabulous pool and gym complex (see pictures above) it was a very relaxing setting and so quiet! On a previous visit to the Cape on business in the late 90s, I'd stayed here, it was vaguely familiar but had been extended quite a lot since that trip. It's claim to fame is that the Dutch founder of the Cape Colony back in 1652, Jan Van Riebeeck had planted the first Vines along the Liesbeek River on the site of the hotel, there were still vines here and ever since that time the area had been called "The Vineyard", the name of the hotel to this day.
We were up early the next day as I'd organized a little beer themed tour and our driver was scheduled to arrive at 9am, more about this in part III
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