Once in a while we get guests that seem to be lovers of the previous atmosphere created by the previous owners. It's a small group of people but they make a load roar. No matter what we do for those people they keep on complaining. Yes we have taken over Roosje van de Kaap in the beginning of last year and yes because we are different people we create a different atmosphere. Atmosphere is something totally personal, luckily most (>90%) of our guests are satisfied and happy. Sadly most of them are not the kind of people to write something on a website like TripAdvisor. Apart from this we have been renovating and upgrading Roosje van de Kaap ever since we moved in. Many problems mentioned in previous reviews have been dealt with and we are still busy making improvements on a daily basis. Actually that's my day task at the moment; my wife's main task is the one of hostess.

First reaction:
Accoring to my wife (co-owner) and one of the cleaning ladies the two guest came in before 12h in the morning and were in a negative mood because of the rain (from the Friday before Christmas till new year it rained in Swellendam). They wanted to go to their room but that was not ready at that time, my wife gave instructions to the cleaning ladies and they finished cleaning the room half an hour later, so before 13h, probably close to 12.30h. In the mean time the guest had sit down in the restaurant were they were busy with their laptop using our internet connection. My wife told them that the room was ready but they kept on interneting, after that my wife told them two more times. They probably kept on sitting there till 15.30h.

Second reaction:
Especially about our food we get a lot of compliments, when I was reading this message two hours before that two people told me that ours was the best food they had so far in South Africa after travelling for 10 days.

Third reaction:
We don't have a wine list because we don't have a liquor license jet. We are allowed to serve liquor but I can not order certain wines because then they ask for a license. I bought some good wines at wineries though but I don't have consistency in the supply to make a wine list. I explain this to a lot of guest. We will have a liquor license and wine list soon.

Fourth reaction:
My wife told me that she told the guest that she didn’t know the price of the wine, I remember my wife telling me about people that insisted in getting themselfs their wine from our wine rack (an antique wine rack beside the cashiers desk and not under it) and that they took the most expensive one of which she didn't know the price, she said she thought it would be about R190 but that it could be more and had to wait for me telling the price. (We had this wine new, bought it only two weeks before that and didn’t sell a bottle from it yet, I didn’t promote it yet.). The wholesale price of that bottle is R150 (de Waal Pinotage Top of the Hill 2005), if people would get it from the winery they probably have to pay more than R200 for it. The owner's son of de Waal told me that they sell this wine in a restaurant in Stellenbosch for R900 and that he was surprised that I wanted to ask only R280 for it in our restaurant.

Fifth reaction:
Our children are generally very quiet!

Sixth reaction:
The honeymoon room not having a working cold water tap is something completely new to me, never hearth that before. Checked it and it is working, but you have to twist it more than other taps. Apart from that, when we took this place over there was a delayed maintenance of three years which we have taken up and in the basis finished it. The step that we are busy with now is to upgrade everything.

Seventh reaction:
We get a lot of compliments about our breakfasts as well, especially about our coffee which most people love. The coffee is a bit thin that's true but it taste very well, it's from an Italian coffee machine the same one the former owner has been using for years.

Eighth reaction:
I can not check individual payments because I get the total of transfers from the whole day. The point is, the system (Nightsbridge) generates an automatic email in which the deposit is mentioned but not deducted. I started asking for deposits about two months ago (I explained this to the guest) and changed the deposit amount to 15% and send people a personal email in which I mention the deposit being taken, ever since. It can be that a few people have paid 10%, and that they are one of them but that group of people is very small. I didn't want to make trouble over 10% with this guest that's why I told him that I trusted him.