Post-Wedding and Stellenbosch Wine Tour

I'm not exactly sure what we've missed on this blog over the past few days. I'm sure there's been a lot. No apologies, though. We got married. We're also in a magnificent part of the world, at a magnificent hotel. Oh, and the internet reception is magnificently bad but considering it's the only complaint we could actually come up with for this property (with thinking about it for awhile), we'd come back a million times over.

Our suite, if we haven't mentioned it already, was designed for Sir Elton John who stayed here a few times. In fact, there is a picture above him on the desk he's autographed to the hotel as I write this. Over the past few years, Elton has gifted six Jacaranda trees to the property which surrounded us as we got married. The rock we brought from the very peak of Whistler Mountain (where we live on the weekends) is now wedged in-between the branches of one of the trees and will stay there forever (the gardening staff has been informed by Edward, the manager who was one of our witnesses, and also is friends with Elton and travels with him while he's here).

Today, we got up late to a disaster of a room. We got back from our wedding dinner (I wish we had pictures... again, they will come from our photographer in a months time) and the room was covered in candles, petals, and a hot milk bath was drawn. There were chocolates on plates and champagne on ice. Amazing. Not so amazing once the bath was taken, towels were thrown, and petals were wilted. The housekeeping had their work cut out for them.

We met Glen Christie of Vineyard Ventures after breakfast and set out on a tour of the Stellenbosch region wineries. Glen is amazingly knowledgable and took us to some amazing spots. We first stopped at the Meerlust Estate (which was actually the setting for the 'The Covenant' by James Mitchener) and, of course, forgot to take pictures. We followed that by Rust en Vrede Estate Winery which had a spectacular setting and very much reminded us of the mountain wineries in Napa Valley, California.

We then went to the Waterford Estate which was a bit more commercial but still lovely. Unfortunately, Ryan is now the one that feels like he's on death's doorstep which kind of put a damper on the day as it went on. At this point he was close to being done. Don't get me wrong - we are really happy I was over my sick business in time for the wedding and if Ry had to catch something (from the millions of kissing pictures, perhaps) we're glad it's now - post wedding, pre safari. Sucks anyway.

Sick or not, my HUSBAND pressed on. It was, after all, lunch. Dale dropped us off at Delaire Graff Estate (as in, the diamond producers). I thought lunch was amazing. Ryan did 'the Barbara Walters' and cut up his food and pushed it around the plate to make it look like he had eaten it. Ry also pushed his 'once sipped' glass of wine my way to finish. In other words, THE BOY IS SICK.

We're supposed to go out for dinner to a local place called Dutch East but right now Ry looks like this so we'll see how the night unfolds.