Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Easy Weekends

Find accommodation in South Africa.
A wedding invitation arrived in the post last week. It looked very pretty, but why do we still send wedding invites by snail mail? We schedule the rest of our lives electronically with Outlook meeting requests, iPhone calendars and Facebook events? I know some may say it’s tradition, but so is eating goat’s testicles in some countries. Or am I just being “unromantic”? Either way, I have totally digressed from the topic.

The wedding is in Robertson (where they hold the Whacky Wine Festival each year in June), at a beautiful little boutique winery called Wolfkloof. Now the drive from Cape Town is by no means far, but I thought traveling back to Cape Town at 1am with my tie around my head and reminiscing about the awesome air guitar I performed on the dance floor earlier, is probably not the best idea. So making a weekend of it and staying two nights in the Breede Wine Valley sounded like a sensible decision. 

From previous experiences, I’ve learned that the more affordable weekend accommodation gets snapped up as soon as the wedding invitations arrive. I also wanted to find the closest possible guest house or self-catering unit to the wedding venue.  

Most accommodation booking websites aren’t particularly helpful when you want to search for weekend getaways in South Africa, with an exact location in mind. Easy Weekends allows you to do exactly that using Google Maps. It can also filter the accommodation according to how much you want to spend.  So if you click on the R 201 – R 500 button, it only shows you accommodation in that price bracket, on the map. I like. 
On the flip side, if you have no idea where you want to go for a weekend getaway, use the map on www.easyweekends.co.za, and discover that little farm cottage, mountain lodge or beach house that you never knew existed. It’s also a great office time waster… Good times!  

Cheers,
Chris