Simon's Town, Wine, and More Great Food

On Thursday Raymond picked us up to take us on a drive down to Simon's Town to see more penguins.  The weather wasn't quite as nice that day, so when we stopped off on the side of the coastal road to get more shots of the penguins we felt like we might get blown off!

Actually had to pull out the warm weather gear for the day

Raymond definitely had a destination in mind to warm us up, with a winery right off the mountain! With very little arm-twistiing, he convinced us to stop for a tasting (the first of many to come on this trip).  This particular vineyard is called the Cape Point Vineyards, and it was promoting the plight of the Leopard Toad through its line of Splattered Toad wines.

I guess I can drink to the toads (or almost anything for that matter)

I guess this is as good a place as any to address this, since I am sitting in wine country as this is being written.  We will be visiting many wineries and doing many tastings, but I will not being going into detail about specific wines.  While my knowledge of wine is greater than the average college student, I probably couldn't comment on too many of the particulars behind the wine.  Instead, I'll try to write down and then post the lists of wines that we try.  You can then go to any of a multitude of online databases and look up the wines if you feel so inclined.  Two of those that I can think of off the top of my head are Wine Spectator (http://www.winespectator.com/) and Snooth (http://www.snooth.com/) which also has a pretty cool photo-based app for the iPhone.

After the winery, Raymond brought us to the Black Marlin (http://www.blackmarlin.co.za/) for a wonderful lunch.  The prawns I had were some of the best of the week.

They really need to start leaving the heads on prawns back in the US

This restaurant would also make a great location to whale watch while eating a great lunch, as it is right on the water and has ample outdoor seating.  The only downside to sitting outside might be the uninvited guests, which Raymond has observed at this restaurant:

I wonder what they order

This was followed by a trip into Simon's Point to see more penguins!

This guy was very photo friendly!

Wondering if the water is warm enough yet

On the drive back, Raymond did a little more arm-twisting and got us to go to another vineyard.  I can't remember the name of this one, but after 5 reds that were all about 6 months to a year too young it was pretty hard to differentiate between any of them.

As for dinner, we went back to the Greek Fisherman (http://www.greekfisherman.co.za/) for another wonderful meal to cap off our week in Cape Town.

I'm going to miss these oysters

I won't do a separate post on today, since it was relatively uneventful.  Raymond brought us to a small Muslim cafe that served a great Malay-style curry, which is definitely a meal to seek out while here.  Then we traveled to Stellenbosch (wine country!), which is where we'll be staying for the weekend.  Tomorrow, we have a tour of 5 wineries planned and then 3 for Sunday.

Definitely time to crash, peace.