Stellenbosch

Hey All,

So Martha and I fail at life…. Sorry we have not updated the blog in like a week or so, but we have been so busy. Where do I begin with all that we have done in the past week? For starters, the weekend before last, we went to Stellenbosch. This weekend, I stayed in my first ever hostile, I think, but it was very nice considering the amount we paid per night. We left bright and early Saturday morning at 5:30 on the City to City bus. Apparently we are not so good with transportation because our bus arrived around 6:30 and they did not have our names on the bus list. They were nice anyways and let us on the bus with our confirmation number in hand. After a short freak out, we began our journey to Stellenbosch. We arrived around 8:30 and then began walking around to find our hostile and stumbled in to the “Stumble Inn” . This is a very cute French influenced town. All of the buildings are white and older looking, and the gutters on the sidewalks are open so we had to be careful not to fall in them while walking. For the remainder of the day, we decided to go to some of the wineries in the area. After going to the travel office like ten times (okay it was like twice), we got a cab to take us to Spier. This is the most commercialized winery in the area. The main attraction for this was to see the Cheetahs. Martha and I decided not to pet any of them because we did not feel like paying 100 Rand to stroke a Cheetah and take a photo…. Instead we paid 5 rand to stand next to one while it was in a cage, and we were on the other side, this was the cheaper, safer choice, and I still was able to take a photo of them.

On the grounds there was a curios market which was really neat. We got to see masks and other typical things sold at markets in RSA. By this time we were ready for lunch so we had a typical Christiansen family lunch, aka snack foods, from the winery’s convenience store. We ate quickly and then began our walk to the next destination. My parents had given us a passport to different wineries and one was for Van Ryn distillery, and since none of us had ever been to a distillery we decided to go and tour. The walk from Spier to Van Ryn was about 20 minutes… It was a very entertaining site to see the three of us walking down the side of the road next to the vineyards. This is when I also got my first South African flag because Martha found it on the side of the road…. It was gross so I threw it away. We were almost running at the end of out walk to make it to the distillery in time for the tour thus ending up practically dripping in sweat. While at Van Ryn, we got to see the world best 12 year brandy in 2005. This accomplishment was displayed all over the walls in the seating room.

For the rest of the afternoon we decided to go to a bigger market in the town square. This started out to be a great idea. Apparently what do you get when you put Mary Emily and money together in a market in RSA… um you get Becky Bloomwood!!! Martha on the other hand has a very different experience.. while paying for her paintings at one shop, one of the guys begins talking to her about everything while they are wrapping then up. Then as she is getting ready to leave the shop another guy comes up and proceeds to ask the same questions and then gives her a Bafana Bafana flag and a hug. Martha walks away to the next shop where I am and is like “oh no what if both of my paintings are not in here and I think this guys was trying to pickpocket me”… so we start to worry obsessively. It turns out that these men were just being friendly and really wanted to give Martha an RSA flag…. Since the shops at the market were trying to pack up we were able to get our purchases for decent prices which is good considering how much we bought.

For dinner we went to the Cape Town Fish Market… we kept trying to figure out why the Cape Town Fish Market was in Stellenbosch, but none the less it was very good, we had fresh sushi, and fish, hence the name .

On Sunday we decided that we should try to walk to the University of Stellenbosch’s campus. On the way, we stopped in Uncle Sam’s store, which is the oldest running store, at least in Africa. It was opened in the 1700s. It had typical old timey things that I would imagine they would use in the old days and then it also had things that people actually use today, like candles and new books. I realize that they used candles and books in the old days but that’s not the point because they were newer. From here, we adventured over to the campus. On the way we saw many groups of bikers. I believe that road biking is a big sport in this country.

While on the campus of Stellenbosch University we tried to find the different offices but since all the signs are in Afrikaans it was hard to find them. We figured that since we are college students and spend most of our lives on a campus we should be able to figure/ find our way around… apparently not every campus is set up like Sewanee. Any ways we wandered around and saw their outside ampatheatres in their quad, the admissions office, and the walk ways that were underground-ish. By this I mean they were exposed but they were below ground level due to openings in the ground, we could not get the point of these but they were very interesting. We had figured that this excursion would take us at least the morning to complete, WRONG! This excursion only took us till around half past 10 thus leaving us the rest of the day to roam aimlessly around Stellenbosch. This extra time would not have been a problem except the fact that all of the taxis were being used by the university students who were coming back from holiday. Because of the lack of taxis, we spent much time in the tourism office and they pointed us to the shopping district of Stellenbosch. Martha and I left the other girl who was with us at a coffee shop and decided to go shopping again!!! We walked around the prettiest part of the town.. The streets looked like a picture perfect small town, with the white buildings, the cafes with seating on the sidewalks on every block, and curios shops. We even saw a shop called Mopani (they even had Pashminas in the store!! If only they sold the movie JoJo Dancer, Your Life is Calling, then it would have been practically every one of Martha’s animals!), and Martha got really excited because they named it after her dog…. Or maybe it was actually the tree…. Well the rest of the weekend was not very exciting so at least we made some really good purchases!

Love,

Mary Emily and Martha