WE’VE TAKEN SOME PRETTY FANTASTIC TRIPS BUT WE BOTH AGREED THIS WAS THE BEST VACATION EVER…
Dear Camille,
Thank you so much for putting together such a fabulous trip. Everything from the hotel accommodations to the restaurant reservations…transfers, etc. worked out perfectly. My husband and I work to vacation and we’ve taken some pretty fantastic trips but we both agreed this was the best vacation ever and your work putting it together really made the difference.
We really enjoyed Cape Cadogan and The Last Word Franschhoek. The rooms were great, staff was fantastic…we loved the location of Cape Cadogan and were glad we were in that part of the city, not down at the waterfront. We enjoyed our day of summer on the Sunday after we arrived taking the Hop on Hop off bus and going up Table Mountain…sat outside at Camps Bay for lunch and got to see everyone enjoying the beach. It was interesting to see the same beach two days later with tour guide Charlie when the storm moved in and the waves and rain made it look completely different.
If I had to do it again, I would take your initial advice and spend one more day in Cape Town…one less in Franschhoek. But as it was it worked out perfect because the extra day in Cape Town would have been rainy and not so good for walking about…and the extra day in Franschhoek was the day my South African cold was the worst so it worked out great to just have a day to relax.
Test Kitchen was absolutely amazing…fun, delicious, quirky and not stuffy like many other top restaurants in the world. The food was incredible. One of the highlights of the trip. The view at Koi was amazing…and I had fun watching this couple on their amazing terrace at the next building down. My husband couldn’t believe we were going to eat at a place called “Codfathers” but it was great…he is still laughing at me for all the prawns I ate. We enjoyed the Tasting Room…but probably too much the night after Test Kitchen.
We really enjoyed our time with Charlie – he had so much knowledge to share and we are still shocked at how reasonably priced really good wine is in South Africa.
As I indicated before, the staff at Federal Air were great – they had already booked us a room at an airport hotel before we got there, knowing we were going to miss our flight. Someone came with us to explain why we had missed our flight and help get us rebooked…it all worked out fine and we got home just fine on Sunday.
The only other change I would have liked is to go to Singita Lebombo before Singita Boulders...but we were happy we got into both. Singita Boulders is our new favorite “hotel” in the world. The people, the room, the food, the game drives…all were great. We did a wine tasting with Jennifer, the amazing sommelier. We talked a bit about the types of wine we enjoy and she changed up what she was planning for the tasting and poured a really special wine for everyone. Then she really surprised us when we go to Singita Lebombo. When they faxed her the menus every day she picked wines for the regular menu for everyone…and picked out a special bottle of white and red for us, based on what we had liked when we did the tasting. That was a great surprise.
We absolutely loved our ranger, Darren, and the other people we were paired with for the game drives – a family of 3 that we had seen at Delaire Graf. The last night at Boulders as we were heading back to the lodge, the ranger stopped to let us know that we were about to head into an area where there were a lot of bees and he suggested we put our blankets over our faces to avoid getting stung. We always listened to what we were told and put the blankets over our heads. When he said we could take them off we removed them to find ourselves on the landing strip with the most beautiful setting for an amazing five course wine tasting dinner. But Darren and the tracker were laughing so hard they could hardly breathe. They had looked at us and were shocked to see us with our heads completely covered as instructed. Every time anyone mentioned the bees we would all convulse with laughter at how gullible we were!
It was absolutely fantastic and we are already plotting when we can return to Cape Town and Boulders…with maybe a different destination next time – Botswana? And we know people talking about making plans for safari and will definitely recommend they contact you – thank you again.
Cheryl