South Africa
Cape Town has one of the most dramatic settings of any city and one of the most weather-dependent itineraries. The mountain closes in high wind, the coast changes character with it, and a plan that fixes those to a particular day is a plan that will get rearranged for you.
Cape Town needs four days for the city, the peninsula and the winelands without rushing. The fifth is the spare day the weather will eventually demand.
February to April — The best window of the year. October and November — Spring, green and quieter.
Work out how many hours you will have in Cape Town on your dates
Southern hemisphere seasons, a Mediterranean climate, and a famous wind. Summer is dry and windy; winter is green and wet.
The best window of the year
Late summer into autumn: warm, dry, and with the summer wind easing off. The peak holiday crowds have gone and the mountain is open more reliably than in midsummer.
Spring, green and quieter
Warming up, wildflowers in the region, and well before the peak season crowds. Some wind, but a good balance of price and weather.
Peak season, peak prices, peak wind
The domestic holiday period: everything is open and busy, prices are at their highest, and the south-easter wind is at its strongest — which is when the cable car most often closes.
Winter: wet, green and cheap
The rainy season, mild rather than cold, with the landscape at its greenest. Much cheaper and emptier, and this is when whale watching along the coast is at its best. A worse beach trip and a perfectly good everything-else trip.
Four days covers the city, the peninsula and the winelands without rushing. Five gives you the spare day that the weather will eventually demand.
This is one of the few destinations where a car makes a real difference. Public transport does not reach most of what people come for, and the peninsula drive is itself one of the best things to do.
The mountain sits in the middle of the city, and everything else radiates around it and down the peninsula.
Cape Town sits between a mountain and two oceans, which means the weather changes radically from one district to another on the same day. The southeasterly wind, which they call the Cape Doctor, blows hard in summer and batters some areas far more than others: Camps Bay can be unliveable on an afternoon when the centre is calm.
The City Bowl — the basin between the mountain and the port — is the most balanced base and the easiest place to reach everything from. The beach neighbourhoods are beautiful and require driving for practically anything.
| Area | Who it suits | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| City Bowl (Gardens, Tamboerskloof) | The best base: central, with the mountain behind and good restaurants. | Parking is difficult and there are hills. |
| V&A Waterfront | Comfortable and secure, with shops, restaurants and the Robben Island boat. | A touristy retail zone; expensive and fairly artificial. |
| Camps Bay and Clifton | Beach, sunsets and the mountain behind. The city's postcard. | Very exposed to summer wind, expensive, and you need a car for everything. |
| Bo-Kaap | The coloured houses and a community with its own history, steps from the centre. | Little hotel stock and very steep streets. |
| Constantia | Vineyards inside the city, quiet and green. | Residential and spread out: it does not work without a car. |
The airport is about twenty kilometres from the centre and there is a direct bus to the Waterfront as well as taxis and apps. The journey is short and simple. What changes the trip is a different decision: whether to rent a car.
And the answer here is fairly clear: yes. The Cape Peninsula, the winelands and the beaches are spread out and public transport between them is thin. You drive on the left and the roads are good. Without a car, every outing becomes an organised tour and you lose the best part of this destination, which is stopping wherever you feel like it.
Here the day trips are not an add-on: they are half the reason to come. Within an hour there are penguins, a cliff road among the world's most beautiful, and a first-rate wine region.
It is one of the world's best value eating cities. Restaurant standards are high and the prices, for a European or American visitor, are notably low, especially with wine: the region makes excellent wines that cost a fraction of what they do abroad.
Local cooking blends influences found together nowhere else: the Cape Malay tradition, with mild sweet curries; the braai, barbecue as a social institution; and biltong, dried spiced meat eaten as a snack.
Cape Town eats extremely well for what it costs, and the food carries the city's history plainly: Malay, Dutch, British and African cooking in the same kitchen. The Waterfront is the easy option and the least interesting one. The good eating is in the Bo-Kaap, in the suburbs, and at the weekend markets — and, unusually for a city this size, a lot of it is outdoors.
Cape Malay cooking, in the place it comes from
The brightly painted quarter on the slope of Signal Hill, home to the Cape Malay community descended from people enslaved and brought here from Southeast Asia. The food — bobotie, denningvleis, koesisters — exists nowhere else in the world in this form. Several family kitchens do set meals; the neighbourhood is also just worth walking.
Check it on WikidataThe South African street food, and where it is from
A hollowed-out half loaf of white bread filled with curry — invented in Durban, now national, and messy by design. There is no cutlery: you tear off the lid and use it to scoop. It is a large amount of food. A quarter loaf is a normal portion for one person and nobody will blink.
Check it on WikidataThe thing that is a meal and an event at once
The South African barbecue, which is a social institution rather than a cooking method. It is over wood or charcoal, never gas, and that distinction is taken seriously. If you get invited to one, go. Otherwise several places in and around the city do a shared-grill version that gets the format across.
Check it on WikidataThe easy option, and what it is actually good for
The redeveloped harbour with a large food market and dozens of restaurants. It is where every visitor eats at least once and it is the most expensive and least local food in the city. Its real use is the wet afternoon and the group that cannot agree — plus it is where the boats to Robben Island leave, so you will be there anyway.
Check it on WikidataA reliable cheap meal, and it started here
The flame-grilled peri-peri chicken chain now found worldwide was founded in Johannesburg in 1987, and Portuguese-Mozambican peri-peri is genuinely part of southern African food. Including it is not a joke: it is consistent, it is everywhere, and eating it in the country it came from is a slightly different and better thing.
Check it on WikidataA four-day trip with the peninsula and the winelands needs Premium; the free version covers one destination for up to three days.
