Today we had nothing planned and we just spent the day around the Estate. It seems Helen is the first one awake each morning and today was again no exception. She went for a morning swim and found Lara in the pool already and even more surprising was that Stephen arrived shortly afterwards. It is surprising because they have been up late most nights playing games or some sort or another and last night they were playing poker until well past 1am.

Some of the group had decided to go outlet shopping about 40 minutes from the Estate. We had looked at the type of shops and they were Gucci, Prada etc and decided even at ‘outlet’ prices we wouldn’t buy anything and so opted out. From the comments of those that went it seems that was exactly the right decision. One family went into Florence to do some initial sightseeing and then to do an ‘escape the room’ game. While I have done those in Cape Town (and enjoyed it), I didn’t see the attraction of doing one in Florence (especially since my Italian isn’t so good). They seemed to enjoy it and I believe they got out of the room in 36 minutes (which sounds way too easy because you’re meant to take an hour – I hope they got a discount).

The rest of spent the day in the pool, around the pool, catching up on emails (in my case because the WiFi was working again) and reading. It was pretty hot again today and got up to 37 degrees and is still probably around 26/27 degrees now at 10:30pm. There is not a breath of wind either which makes it feel hotter.

We did our own dinner tonight which was a braai of chicken and sosaties. Last time we had a family reunion I did the braai with my brother and this time I was off the hook in that my brother and brother-in-law did the work. I was quite pleased not to have to braai but my brother said it was much easier than the last time when we were using a wood braai (they did it on gas).

After dinner we had a quick game of 3 on 3 soccer and I am still trying to recover (still sweating despite sitting in front of the aircon for 20 minutes while I typed this). The good news is that we won 4-1 and put my 3 nephews to shame – they were shamed by Stephen, Jack (my youngest nephew aged 9) and me.

Until tomorrow (that photo on the left is of my youngest niece .. she’s about to turn 3 and has been getting the most attention of out of everyone here – good luck to her parents when she gets home)

P, S (for being a winner), H, L, M, O & C