Lets visit… Eaglevlei near Stellenbosch

My wife and I have this wonderful opportunity to come to Cape Town. A congregation has invited me to lead their Sunday morning service.

To afford the air tickets, we had to come a little bit earlier, as the tickets get really expensive over the weekend self.

Yesterday morning we had a little bit of time to explore. It was a rainy day in the Cape. But we really enjoyed it a lot…

Our first stop was at Eaglesvlei. And here is some of what we experienced…

 

Here we had some breakfast. The restaurant is really stylish, with a comfortable fire burning in the fireplace on a cold day like yesterday was really special…

My wife decided on the health breakfast- stewed fruit with muesli and yogurt with honey…

And I went totally out of my comfort zone. There was a starter: Snoek is a very delicious Cape fish. They prepared Snoek and Feta Samoosas, with caramelised cabbage, served with a mango and lime salsa…

Eaglevlei is a working wine cellar, but they do things with such class…

We have done a lot more than this yesterday, but today is really misty- not one photo yet today, we are staying indoors at a friend… So later on I will share some more. But Eaglevlei- definitely worth a visit!

The Cape of Good Dreams

I do not have the ability at the moment to post photos. But I had the most awesome day with my wife in the Cape. We are staying with some of our oldest and best  friends in the Cape…

The flight last night was extremely crowded. On the budget airlines they really cram a lot of people into a Boeing!  You really sit on the lap of the person behind you! And they fit three people on seats just a little bit wider than my toilet seat at home…  The flight was  a bit bumpy with a good smattering of turbulence thrown into the equation… Fortunately I had 2 airline pilots in my church at a time, and the one with the most experience on Boeing 747’s assured me that he do not know of 1 airplane that was ever lost due to turbulence alone. So I just imagined being on a roller coaster, continuing to read my Kobo reader.  Finally we landed. Boy, do passengers make it difficult disembarking an airplane in South Africa. They wait for ALL the rows in front of them to get off the plane, get their luggage at the carousel and then find the taxi home. Then they will slowly arise, and start slowly, slowly to get their luggage from the overhead storage bins, standing in the middle of the aisle, so that no one may pass… It takes forever…  Flying on  a domestic budget airline is not fun… Cape Town’s airport was extremely windy as always but the pilot did an excellent job landing us… as they said in the First World War: Any landing you cab walk away from is a good landing…

But today really made up for it! It was a rainy day. We had the most awesome breakfast at Eaglevlei. We then went on to the Muratie cellars, and then lunch at Franschhoek. I took the most beautiful photos today, come back soon, I have such lovely photos and experiences to share when I reach a wifi zone…

Cape Town here we come…

Table Mountain

Tonight, my wife and I are flying to Cape Town for a long weekend.  A congregation of a small town just outside Cape Town has invited me to come and deliver Sunday’s sermon.  It is a great honour and privilege to be asked, and we are really looking forward to Sunday.

So if I do not blog till Tuesday, just know that I am in a happy place… 🙂

Cape Town friends- any suggestions where I can eat Lobster/Crayfish/ Kreef at a reasonable price- it would be nice to get #19 crossed off my Bucket List…

Say my name, but in secret… (Daily Prompt)

Daily Prompt: Say Your Name

by michelle w. on May 28, 2013

Write about your first name: Are you named after someone or something? Are there any stories or associations attached to it? If you had the choice, would you rename yourself?

Photographers, show us  YOU.

_____________________________________

I have had this weird experience in the blogging world. I write just like I am… and it happened two times now that people traced me, and used my blog as a weapon against me. No, actually three times now, including this year.  One time the atheist complained to my church board about me, the other time a very religious, pious guy complained with the Synod…  And then I had the “little chat” about my flavored language that kept popping up in Afrikaans, words like thunder and lightning- very very bad words… You know, I write all these dangerous statements all the time, damaging people’s reputations, tearing the church down… I might even be a closet ax murderer… So my name is not that obvious in this blog…

Every now and again it just keeps popping up,
Would you believe people could be that nasty?
All the time, I have to hide my name, as if in shame…
Let this be a lesson be to you all,
Damned if you do, damned if  you don’t…

And as my daughter so cruelly started to publish my photo last Friday: Here I am, this is me…  The friend of all the naughty people in the world- “he mixes with sinful people…”  

Somewhere in Belgium- was it Leuven? And in Warmbaths, South Africa, with Uncle Jack…

Sometimes I am fit… 2 day’s before last year’s Argus Cycle Tour- mind the beautiful cycling helmet hairdo…
So this is me. I took 45 years to do it, but in year 46 I am happy with who I am, I am enjoying my life, and I have made the best I can of the name my parents chose for me.
It would help a lot if I were not THAT allergic to beer and good food, that I could look like the Super Athlete I am deep inside…   My wife loves me more than 51% of the time, my kids love me the day or two after payday, and I am blessed with some really good friends in life…

Judging by the people surrounding me in life…  I am happy…

 In my daughter’s eyes…

Flaneur my hometown- a few more photos

I live in a lovely town. You will see how lovely by these photo’s, some more of mine from last Friday’s competition between me and my daughter…   These were taken in the ugliest part of town… These photos are mine… 

2. 

3. 

4.   They asked to be on the Internet… 

5.  Just starting to play around with photo editing- I have nearly no experience of this… 

All these for today, for I have an extreme writers block- have been busy preparing for Sunday’s extremely important happening till one o’ clock this morning and my head is spinning…  So no boom-boom today…

A Travel question…

Where is this pub and name some of it’s famous patrons?

Also nicknamed : The Bird and the Baby…

Oh please let me be Lesley Carter for a week… (Daily Prompt)

Daily Prompt: Switcheroo

by michelle w. on May 27, 2013

If you could switch blogs with any blogger for a week, with whom would you switch and why?

________________________________________

Well… WordPress started it- they asked…

http://lesleycarter.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/bucketlistcolourlogo_no-background_4004.png

I LOVE Lesley Carter’s blog– Bucket List Publications…  What do I love about it? Lesley is the one person on the blogworld that dares to dream big dreams, and then go and do it.  She has the ultimate travel blog- this is not just my opinion, with 18 million views, and over 65103 followers, Lesley is certainly doing something right.

I love her humorous way of describing the places that she visits. I love her photography.  I love all the places that she visits. So if the genie pops out of the bottle, and let me be somebody else, I would love to be Lesley Carter for a week…

If she would love to be me for a week, I’m not so sure…

So this is just one way of paying respect to a blogger I admire a lot. She is not the only one. There are a lot of others as well. If your name appears on my bloglist, I like you a lot. If it is not yet there- keep on writing good blogs (in my eyes) sometime I will feel guilty of neglecting you, and put you up there. And if I don’t- may be that I just don’t remember to do it often. Do not worry, if I do not like your blog I say nothing, I just move on. The blog world is big enough for all of us, and somewhere each of us find people who inspire us, and people who we’d rather sidestep.  Why make an issue out of it?

Thanks for so many inspiring bloggers out there!

The Journey… (Daily Prompt)

Daily Prompt: Journey

by michelle w. on May 26, 2013

Tell us about a journey — whether a physical trip you took, or an emotional one.

________________________________________

I have had so many smaller journeys on the One Big Journey of Life.  I had a hard time to think about which one to share. And then I decided to share the first one, when leaving my parents’ house.

I had finished matric, and also had my first stint at Iscor, the South African steel producer.  But it had also been a traumatic Christmas holiday- we buried my youngest sister after she passed away from cancer.  And two weeks later my first girlfriend in my life broke up with me, the day before Christmas. Talk about finishing your school days with a bang…

In these times I had to go on towards my adult life, leaving the security of childhood in the past.

I had enrolled at a university 500 km away from my parent’s house.  There are only 3 universities in South Africa where our church train pastors. I chose not to go to the nearest one, because I wanted a clean start in adult life. Some of my interpersonal experiences in the high school just made me want for a totally new environment, without having to bump into some school day enemies…

At the University I went to, first year students are not allowed to bring cars onto the campus. I also still had my old trusty Honda MB5, which was much lighter on the juice… much more affordable transport in the city for a student anyway.

So the first real journey in my adult life was when I decided to ride the bike to University.  The old 50 cc’s were not fast, and also not fun to do a long distance trip with. But I just had the need to do it. I was overwhelmed with a lot of emotions I can not even today begin to describe… Extremely sad about my youngest sister’s death. Absolute terror for the hazing I knew was coming in the university dormitory. Fear of leaving my old world behind to start something new.  Hope for the future, a new chapter in my life was beginning. Looking forward to meeting the famous university girls. Maybe one day meeting my future wife…  Fear for the Greek and Hebrew that were waiting for me (and it was much worse than my worst nightmares!)

With that beautiful mixture of flavours in my emotional condition I said goodbye to Mom and Dad, and my middle sister, and climbed onto my MB5 to ride the road to the future…

And like Forrest Gump said: That is all I want to say about that…

PS. It took me about 8 hrs to complete the journey…

Climbing 0′ Cebreiro

On the Camino de Santiago, the climb up o’Cebreiro is really tough, if you are not that fit, or you carry a 14 kg backpack…

To see a little bit of o’ Cebreiro at the moment- visit the webcam there from the Municipal Albergue here: http://www.crtvg.es/crtvg/camaras-web/o-cebreiro

I see it is a rainy day today, but then: This is Galicea- what did you expect?

In the webcam’s view  there is a restaurant. The Meson CArolo:

It is a really good place to be on a rainy day, nice owners, nice hot fireplace going…

Tomorrow- 2 years ago, I boarded the Lufthansa flight via Frankfurt to Madrid for my Camino. I long to go back every single day…

Thinking of you on the route- Buen Camino!

Weekly Photo Challenge: In the Background

In the Background- a lone wall with window overlooking the North Sea at Portsoy, Scotland

I have to conduct a funeral this morning, no time to write long blogs.  This photo was taken on my healing trip to Scotland in 2006. Overlooking the harbour of Portsoy there stands this lone wall on a hill. It is all that is left of the house. And this window must have given such a view to the inhabitants then.

___________________________________________________

In the Background: The places that we pass through day after day, or even once in a lifetime, leave in their small way, echoes and traces of themselves upon us. But so often when taking self portraits or pictures of friends, the places themselves become a soft blurred mush of indistinct semi-nothingness, the limelight stolen by our smiling faces. In today’s challenge, let’s turn the tables. Take a picture of yourself or someone else as a shadow, a reflection, or a lesser part of a scene, making the background, or — as in the example above — the foreground, the center of attention.

In a new post created for this challenge, share a picture that says In the Background.

I’m looking forward to seeing you all but disappear into the moments you capture.

– Pick

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/weekly-photo-challenge-in-the-background/