keeping up...

so last night we went to another of the Publican wine dinners held at Publican Quality Meats- this one focused on South African wines.  You may recall that we have visited both South Africa and in particular some of the wine country there.

perhaps a little bit of travelogue is called for - LOL

What did we do in South Africa? In all we were there a bit over a month- we spent a little over two of those weeks in Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe on safari which was possibly our favorite trip of all time... 80 countries and visiting the animals in THEIR home was so overwhelming emotionally, and brought me to tears several times... such magnificence! But in South Africa our focus was on a range of activities - so we went to the southern Cape where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet -

we saw penguins - cute little ones!

we went to the elephant sanctuary and the cat sanctuary and the monkey sanctuary - all wonderful things to do along the Garden Route...

we visited wineries and wine country- and ate a lot of seafood-

we visited many sites related to one of my personal heroes Nelson Mandela - including Robben Island and the place he gave the long walk to freedom speech

we made several visits to Table Mountain and we had tea at the Mount Nelson Hotel-

so we really liked our time in the area immensely - and that was why we signed up for the South Africa wine dinner at Publican that we attended last night.

no photo of the bunny chow because Phil did not want the curry and in the machinations of getting him something else to eat I forgot to take a photo- LOL- otherwise these follow along with the menu above

a very nice evening made better by several really nice table mates - a lovely couple (her family was from South Africa) both in the food and beverage industry... and on our other side  two guys who love food, one of them knew a ton of people at the event and the other was from Chandigarh in India where our friends Mac & Niti and their family live! It is such a small world.  Brian (who knew everyone) had just come back from a dining trip in Denmark and Holland and London.... which parallel travels of Noah and Cara (London) and Beth (Denmark) at the very same time...

next up a party for a few old friends and colleagues and then Bastille Day--- with a fun menu of French things and we dug out the wines for that one today .... coordinating with others attending - so we are on "red duty" LOL

a 1977 Graham's Port and these wines -  from the 90s for the courses where we will need a red...

so we managed to keep busy as retirees LOL - and we are marshalling all our travel gear in prep for the East Africa trip for the Great Migration! Cue the wildebeests!