Greyton Was Great ‘n Stuff

On the 21st of March, Seth and I celebrated being married for 10 YEARS!

Yip.  We made it to 10 years.  I’d be totes lying if I said that it’s always been easy – marriage is hard.  But that’s not what this post is about.  As you know by now, because I can’t help but talk about it ALL THE FREAKING TIME – Seth and I are heading to Italy to celebrate this huge event in May.

But we’re leaving the kids behind.

So we wanted to celebrate with them, seeing as though they are easily the best thing we’ve done in the last 10 years.

However, if you know anything about us personally, you’ll probably know that we need to have the catch phrase “Better late than never” printed out onto apology cards that we can just hand out when we arrive at events.  Because late.  Because children.  Which means that we only woke up two weeks before we wanted to go away to actually book the accommodation.

We didn’t have many options, but after searching we found a place called High Hopes in Greyton that fitted our limited budget and seemed nice.  Because it was a very long weekend, we skipped driving up on the Friday and paying for a night there when we would arrive super late and rather stayed from the Saturday to the Tuesday.  A great decision if I do say so myself!  When I left work in Cape Town CBD at like 3pm that Friday the traffic was already a freaking nightmare – it would have SUCKED having to drive there in that.

Instead, we had a leisurely breakfast at the Waterfront before heading out…

We drove straight there, through the driest Western Cape ever.  I don’t think I have ever seen the countryside so dry.  Every single dam or river we drove passed was either completely dried up or only a fraction of what it was.  It was actually quite scary – actually seeing the reality of it for yourself.  It’s real.  There’s no water!  Do your bit to save as much as you can (we got ours down to R35 pm! – it’s totally possible.  Maybe I’ll do a post on it later).

Greyton is a beautiful place.

Lots of country vibe buildings but also an active community full of restaurants, thrift stores, chocolate shops and even a gin bar.  I love a small town that combines the quaint with the reality that when people are on holiday they don’t want to cook.  Or at least I don’t.

Our accommodation was actually a retreat where you can have varies therapies done and sit in the beautiful garden and reflect on life.  Which was totally perfect to bring three kids to am I right?  Nope.  But even though we thought our kids were the loudest ever (Knox’s inside voice is shouting) they said our kids were the best behaved kids they’d ever had.  And usually I wouldn’t humble brag like that, but damn, I felt proud and maybe also a bit like they were lying.  But anyway, I freaking love my kids.

On our second morning there we decided to take a walk around the town.

On the hottest day ever.

With children who hate walking.

Maybe just a bit of a mistake.  We spent most of the time there like this…

It was really lovely exploring the two roads that have action on them.

The kids wanted to be the photographers for this section of our trip, so I let them go wild.  We went into every single store.  Loads of little thrift stores inside restaurants, a little grocer to get all your food from and even a craft brewery.  We stopped for coffee and smoothies at a beautiful garden restaurant near the entrance to the town.  We got to chill in beautiful surrounds while the kids played their hearts out.  Which is funny that they can do that but not like, walk or anything.

Then we stopped for chocolate tasting – because when you see a sign about chocolate you stop.

And then when we were satisfied that we had really seen everything there was to see, we headed back to our accommodation to recover.

That night I wanted to do something different, so I downloaded the first Harry Potter book on Audible and then played the first chapter for them before bed.  What a huge success!  Man I loved listening to it and the girls really enjoyed it too.  Knox, not so much.  But that’s OK.  3 out of 5 seems like a success to me.

On the third morning the girls had gotten used to opening all the curtains at like the crack of dawn.  They’d started on the far side by the kitchen and then slowly worked their way to the curtains next to my bed.

Waking up is probably the worst part of my day.  I don’t wake up well.  Because I love sleeping.  So much.

So when they started screaming, I was like what the flip?!  Why the heck are they losing their minds and then, just as I was about to lose my mind at them losing their minds I looked up at what they were screaming at.

And well…  Seth has a better video of it on his Instagram, but I can’t seem to embed it in here, so the still picture will have to do.

Within seconds, we were all on the other side of the room trying not to freak the flip out.

Seth wanted to save us from it, but gosh darnit those things are FAST.  It literally moved like lightening!

So we called in the back up of the lovely woman who owns the place and she saved us with some tuuperware and a newspaper.  But then we saw this.  And well, I had to burn the place down.  So I’m sorry, if you wanted to go to Greyton anytime soon, you can’t.  Because they’re still busy rebuilding.

Luckily we have some photos of the rest of our trip there, if you want to see what it’s like…

Check these two with the same frown.

Seth trying but not trying to be a schmodel.  Not pictured – us laughing at how terribly it turned out.

Knox embracing his long hair.  I think we should cut it, Seth thinks this is our only chance ever to grow it.  So we’re going with it.  For now.

He might be a boy but he knows how to look after Angie while his “mom friend” and he get more acquainted with the smaller wildlife in the area.

Can you even go to breakfast without ALL your dolls?

Breakfast was included in our stay and it was fruit salad (with yoghurt for those eating yoghurt), cereals (for those that can eat cereals) and then a hot breakfast with mushroom, tomatoes and eggs.  It was delish!  Riya was initially excited by the fact that she got her own little pot of rooibos tea and fruit salad – Kyla was not so keen (haha).

Tune in tomorrow when I’m going to do something a little different – a “Photo Diary of Greyton” where you can actually see more of the actual town before, you know, we had to burn it down and stuff.