Travel Review: Luxury South Africa Honeymoon Safari, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Franschhoek, Stellenbosch

Stellenbosch:  I do wish we had done two days of vineyards.  We had a lovely time, and definitely had a nice variety of vineyards, but I wish we had a specific person/expert at each vineyard that would have given us a tour of the property and/or wine cellar.  Babylonstoren was magical and I am so glad that they sell their wine in our favorite winestore in NYC!  The other vineyards were great, and I know Phil really loved the wine and chocolate pairing at Waterford.  For the second dinner I ended up making the executive decision to try and get our meal in town rather than going back out into the vineyards.  We were tired from the day and the thought of 20 minute Ubers both to and from wasn’t appealing to us.  Thankfully there was a last minute cancellation at Jardine that we were able to snag!  I have to say I am so happy we made that decision because it was one of our favorite meals the entire trip.  We loved the wines and hope to return some day.  I will say though, the low point of the trip also occurred here, and I’d be remiss not to mention it.  It truly wasn’t that big of a deal, but the experience Delaire Graff was a bit stressful.  As you know our flights needed to be rescheduled due to CemAirs issues, which was understood.  However, even though we informed the restaurant that we were running late (as had you, and having warned us before that they stop seating people at 9:00pm) the hostess was VERY rude to us upon arrival.  She was pushy and trying to rush us, and they still had several large tables who were JUST beginning to get their appetizers.  We were already extremely apologetic about our tardiness (though not our fault) but she really soured the mood for us.  That meal also was by far the most expensive and we didn’t get to reap the benefits of the spectacular view so it just left a bit of a bad taste in our mouth.  The waiter was lovely, and the food was good (though not the best dinner we had) which helped turn my mood around, but I just felt like the restaurant could have handled the situation better.  Also, for our lunch in Franschhoek, it didn’t really seem like there was a plan so we ended up at a really sub-par restaurant and needed to end up taking the meal on the road in the van because we were running behind on time.  If we were to take the trip again we'd spend more time in the winelands and one less day in Cape Town.  Also we would have gotten those Test Kitchen reservations in Cape Town.