Thursday, March 29, 2007

Love and Romance in Kommetjie




This weekend saw the wedding of Nic Kinghorn (the executive creative director at our advertising agency) and Lisna Erasmus (a cool designer and Nic’s lovely lady!) in Kommetjie, Cape Town. Three people from our agency were invited so we decided to make a holiday of it in the fairest Cape.
We flew out super early on Friday morning (Mango Airlines, Dbn-CT return for just ±R500!), had a disappointing breakfast at the beautiful Rhodes Memorial (my Spanish omelet was full of eggshell, - cringe!), bummed around Cape Town for a bit and then braaied and crashed at an old mate’s place. We would have done the B&B thing, but these mates insisted that we crashed with them for the three nights that we were there, and I’m so glad that we did! We were just so comfortable and we had our very own tour guides for the entire duration of the trip! (Thanks Jason and Lea! You guys rock!)
After a good sleep, it was off to The V&A Waterfront for coffee and then to The Goatshed for brunch. What an experience! Fairview dairy has opened up a stunning restaurant and farm shop to showcase their awesome range of cheeses (and a few of the local wines). And boy are they doing it well! Everyone’s favourite seems to be the cheese platter, - R28 for 6 cheeses; R35 for 8 cheeses and R42 for 10 cheeses, served on a wooden cheese board with some preserves and warm freshly baked bread rolls... Yum! They had more than TWENTY THREE different kinds of cheeses to choose from, allowing you to choose which 6, 8 or 10 cheeses you wanted to sample on your board. Seeing as I’m not eating bread anymore, I decided to give the cheese board a skip and had the roasted veg quiche and salad instead. It was a fabulous choice and I was ready to explode by the time we hit the farm store for a quick browse! From there, I slipped away (to Cavendish Square) to find some pretty beads to wear with my dress for the wedding the next day and then it was a quick freshen up for dinner at a quaint pizza place around the corner from Jason and Lea’s place. I ordered the bacon/feta/olives/avo/chili number, - perfection! And so ended day two.
Day three saw me tucking into rusks and coffee for breakfast, basking in the morning sun and sighing over the beautiful view of The Mountain from Jason and Lea’s backyard. We then bundled ourselves into the car and headed off to Sinful for some toasted coconut icecream with a scoop of hazelnut icecream on the side (drool!) and a long brisk walk on the beach at Hout Bay. The little puppies galloping on the shore were just too cute and it took Lea and I way longer than it should have to finish our walk. We kept stopping to scratch behind some furry pup’s ear, or to ruffle their soft fur! Too cute. We then took a lazy drive along Chapman’s Peak and got back to the house in time to get dressed for the wedding at 5pm.
Nic and Lis are quite unconventional, so we didn’t know quite what to expect, except that the wedding would be very special and different. All we knew is that we would have to wear easily removable shoes because the wedding itself was on the beach. If you’re South African, the name “kommetjie” stirs up all kinds of pretty images, and yes, it didn’t fail to deliver. Kommetjie is so small, if you blinked while driving through, you might actually miss it! It’s not a fishing village, - not smelly enough! It’s not just a seaside village, - you’re only 2 streets and a factory or two away from the “town”... It’s all of these things and more, with its sun-bleached wood and walls and powder soft white seasand. They couldn’t have chosen a lovelier place to finally tie the knot, ending an 11 year courtship. The pics on this post are taken from my cell phone so you can’t see very much and it doesn’t do the beautiful bridal party justice at all, but they’re all I have anyway...
It’s funny how my horoscope said that romance was in the stars on Sunday 25th March. What could be more romantic than a beach wedding, under the stars in Kommetjie... Sigh!
We eventually found our way back around the mountain in the dark and settled in for a wonderful, last night’s sleep before we reluctantly had to hop on a plane to Durban.
With a calamari and sushi brunch from Panama Jack’s filling our bellies, we boarded at 3.30pm and were back in Durban by 6pm, where it was already dark and gloomy. Our cell phones hadn’t stopped ringing all afternoon with calls from work and by the time we unpacked and got ready for bed, it was like we’d never left Durban at all...

4 comments:

Gail Streak said...

Looks like it was beautiful. G

Yzerfontein said...

Stunning clickies. I love Kommetjie. Those Mango flights are cheap cheap, you just gotta transform yourself into a sardine for 2 hours!

Carmen Gabriel said...

The sardine thing was AWFUL!
I can't understand why the seats have to lean FORWARD like that! I've had a dodgy neck for days! But hey... it beats driving / not going at all / paying a fortune to get there!!!

noodle said...

How stunning. We used to stay Kommetjie for our annual holidays.

I'm thinking this is the year for mini-breaks. Book the cheap flights, see a bit of SA, keep sane, etc.