Classes are over, time for fun

Last week was pretty terrible from the work stand point which finally ended on wednesday with my last lectures and final papers turned in. That means starting wednesday night it was time to have some fun.

Wednesday night we played too many rounds of landmines and made our way off to Stones for 2 for 1 hour. It was fun, but nothing too crazy.
The next day we managed to get ourselves out of bed and off to the aquarium. It wasn't a particularly crazy aquarium but fun no less. The seahorses and jellyfish were mind blowing as usual. We headed out from the aquarium, but were down at the Waterfront (the very very nice part of cape town) and wanted to make the most out of being there. Just out of curiosity I checked out the menu at this fancy fancy sushi restaurant called Sevruga. We weren't planning on eating at all, expecially not at that kind of restaurant, but when we found out it was half priced sushi we couldn't afford to say no. The classy decor and rich old men sitting around made us feel a little out of place, but we sucked it up. Sushi was amazing and not terribly expensive. I'm always a sucker for half priced sushi.

Afterwards, we went home and rested up for the night ahead. Plans were to head to the casino with my buddy Max since I have never been. We headed to Grand West Casino, Dave, Adha, Max and I, to try our luck on the newly opened hold 'em tables. I wasn't sure how much money to buy in at the table for but the minimum was R500. The wise words of Big Dub were "only play for as much money as you're willing to lose." With that in mind, I bought in for the minimum and immediately was the short stack at the table. I lost a couple of tough beats early on, but snagged some blinds and a few small pots to get myself in a descent position. It one point I had an amazing beat on this guy where I made a full house to his three of a kind and took about R500 from him. At that point I was sitting pretty. A couple of split pots later I found myself at abot R1000 total. The other guys had lost all their chips at this point so rather than holding them up much more I cashed out.

There's a lot of kids who have rooting interests for the Celtics, and that night was game 6 of cavs celts so they all wanted to watch. There was only one bar around that was playing the game (started at 2am). So we drank some Redbull and got hyped for the game and stayed at the bar until 5 am. The Celts won, which sucked, but it was an awesome time.

We didn't get much sleep that night since we were getting up earlyish the next day to headed to Stellenbosch, the wine country. We drove about an hour to get there and checked into our hostel. At this point it was raining and we were feeling a neutral about or choice to come. This changed though at our first wine tasting. We showed up at Tokara who were the most generous with their wine. Free tasting of 6 different kinds started the day off right. We then headed next door to another winery valled Thelema. This was our least favorite of the bunch because the lady in there was not friendly and they were stingy with their wine. Next, came Zorgvliet which was more remote and very private. They had perhaps the best wine in the most beautiful atmostphere. None of us are winos (yet), but it was really fun casually drinking wine and chatting with friends all day.
That night, we headed out to dinner on the recommendation of a random guy at the ATM which ended up being a great call. It was a student bar with really cheap beer and we had a great time there. We went to a few other bars and clubs that night, none of which was very clear due to the alcohol and general unfamiliarity with the area but everyone had a great time. Some funny points in the night include: drunk, homeless women singing boom boom pow in the middle of the road, karl saying "Waiter, Another round?" (addressed to us and the waiter simultaneously), adha smashing my mcdonalds glass on the floor, and me for some reason running off with random people to another bar without telling anyone. We all made it home in one piece so its all good.
They kicked us out of the hostel early the next day and continued our drinking escapades at Van Ryn, a brandy distillery. Here we tasted their 10yr and 12yr aged brandies. Surprisingly the 12yr was SIGNIFICANTLY better than the 10yr which was almost undrinkable by itself. Brandy is nice to sip on, but I don't like it more than whiskey. After this, we made it to our final tasting at Spier. Spier is probably the most touristy place i've been in all of SA. It tries so hard to display african culture to the rich tourists it attracts and does so in a particularly disingenuous way as it uses african culture as its catchy theme. The food is great and so is the wine, but this is not real africa. We had our final wine tasting here, and it was quite nice like the rest.

It was a great weekend, and now I must get back to real life with two exams coming up next week. As of today, I have exactly one month left in Cape Town. It will definitely be the best month of all because school is ending, I've got lots of trips planned, the world cup, and KARA IS COMING TO VISIT! It should be an amazing time and a great way to cap off the semester.

More to come soon.