Travels with Beezus

Exploring South Africa with a Pomchi

Tag: Franschhoek

  • Categorising towns will be the real tourism game-changer!

    Not all towns are tourism towns and some towns will never become tourism towns.  I first mentioned the need for towns to be categorised in “Tourism will never be Helen Zille’s game-changer until there are lots of changes.”  In response to another article where I said Montagu is not a tourist town (because most businesses […]

  • The Most Beautiful Street in South Africa

    Tulbagh’s Church Street must be the most beautiful street in South Africa.  Devastated by an earthquake in 1969, it was painstakingly restored and the 32 buildings comprise the largest concentration of National Monuments in a single street in South Africa, all of which are in daily use for you to enjoy.  You can stay, dine or shop…

  • Tourism will never be Helen Zille’s game-changer until there are lots of changes

    It’s been an interesting first few days of travels, and one realises how much observations and thoughts are always formed by the experiences that went before. What I observed in Montagu, my first stop, raised a red flag that was re-inforced throughout the Robertson Wine Valley.  The urgent imperative in SA today is to create…

  • How Franschhoek became such a successful tourist town

    Thirty years ago, Franschhoek was sleepy hollow personified, and very little had changed in the preceding 70 years.  It was a farming dorp which attracted a few city folk on a Sunday drive to escape the city and the only attractions were the Huguenot Museum (which was — unusually for a small country town —…

  • Sir Richard Branson’s new South African hotel & vineyard

    Big investments are not new in Franschhoek, and it’s rumoured that a new foreign owner is spending billions on a property at the other end of Dassenberg Road.  That wasn’t a typo, yes… billions.  Now that’s crazy! But the old Mont Rochelle has been bought by Virgin’s Limited Edition Group, and that can only be…