Sunday in Stellenbosch - Wine tasting

Today we decided to drive south toward the coastal town of Somerset West and visit a winery or two along the way.

Our first stop was Avontuur Estate, a vineyard and horse farm just a couple of miles from our hotel.

Since they have both a restaurant and tasting room, we thought we might have lunch there as well as tasting wine.  

While I sampled their wares, John asked to get a table for lunch.

We had arrived just at noon and thought it unusual that so many people were already there - usually wineries get busy later in the afternoon.  However, we discovered that the newly enacted coronavirus laws require that no alcohol be served after 1pm on Sundays (6pm other days of the week).  

I finished my tastings - and bought a bottle of excellent Chardonnay - and we went to the restaurant to be seated for lunch.  Suddenly the maitre d’ (aka Brunhilda) had no recollection of John asking for a table, and gave us a line of nonsense about a limit of 50 people in the restaurant (there may have been 30 there at the most).  John tried to explain that she’d taken our name already, but she brushed that off.

We left.

As we drove away, it occurred to us that they weren’t interested in continuing to serve lunch if they couldn’t also serve wine, which is where the profit is.  So we continued on to Somerset West, where we found -

This wasn’t just any McDonalds - this was a brand new one.  We couldn’t tell if they were open because no one was there.  (More people came in later.)

And they had the cleanest, nicest restrooms we’ve ever seen in a fast food place!