I moved to Cape Town in 2007 for the quality of life and never really left. In 2013 I opened BEERHOUSE on Long, which had the biggest beer selection in Africa. It closed in August 2024 after eleven years, and the reason was extortion rather than anything to do with the beer. That is a longer story for another page.
What survived the bar is the question I still get constantly. Friends back in Europe escaping the winter, planning a few days or weeks or months down here, all asking the same thing: “We’re coming to Cape Town, what should we actually do?” This page is the answer I send. It started as an email to friends and family, it is not a guidebook, and it is not trying to be complete. It is just my personal highlights, meant to sit alongside whatever else you are reading.
Last substantial update: July 2026. Cape Town’s food and nightlife scene turns over fast, so assume one or two places on this list have closed or slipped since. Check before you make a special trip.
Practical things worth knowing before you land
Get a local number, do not roam
First and most important: forget roaming on your own SIM. You are outside the EU and the rates European carriers charge here are an absolute disgrace. You can easily spend more on a week of WhatsApp and a couple of emails than on every restaurant meal of your entire trip.
Get a local prepaid SIM the moment you arrive, and my recommendation is Cell C. The rates are excellent: local calls cost cents, and so do calls to European landlines and mobiles, which still surprises people. Add a data bundle and you are paying a fraction of what your home carrier would charge you for the same gigabyte.
Every SIM in South Africa has to be RICA-registered, so bring your passport and the address of wherever you are staying. An airport kiosk or any carrier shop will do it for you in 15 to 30 minutes. If you would rather skip the counter entirely, a prepaid eSIM bought before you fly (Airalo, Holafly and similar) works from the moment you land, though you give up the local number and pay more per gigabyte.
Getting around
Uber and Bolt both work well and are how most people move around the city, especially after a beer or four. They are cheap by European standards. Metered street taxis are the one thing I would actively warn you about.
If you want to explore the peninsula properly, rent a car. Distances are real and public transport will not get you to the good stuff. Driving is on the left.
Safety, honestly
There is almost none of the tourist-fleecing you get in other destinations. Prices are what they say they are. What you should be sensible about is opportunistic crime: do not walk around with your phone out at night, do not leave anything visible in a parked car, use Uber or Bolt after dark rather than walking across town.
The classics, and yes they are worth it
You can trust the standard top-five lists on CapeTownMagazine.com and CapeTown.travel. They are updated far more often than this page is. My shortlist:
- Table Mountain. Go at the first opportunity you get with clear, calm weather, not on the day you have planned for it. The cable car closes in high wind and you may not get a second chance.
- Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, ideally for the Sunday summer concerts if your timing works out.
- Robben Island, Mandela’s prison. Tours are led by former political prisoners, which is what makes it.
- Zeitz MOCAA, the contemporary African art museum built inside a converted grain silo at the Waterfront. The building alone justifies the ticket.
- District Six Museum, small but essential for understanding the city you are standing in.
- Bo-Kaap, the brightly painted historic Cape Malay quarter. Walk it, do not just photograph it.
- The red City Sightseeing bus, if you like that sort of thing. Genuinely a decent way to get oriented on day one.
Eating and drinking
This is the section that ages fastest, so treat it as a starting point.
Coffee and breakfast
- Breakfast at the Green Point lighthouse and a walk on the promenade afterwards is my standing recommendation for a first morning.
- Truth Coffee on Buitenkant Street is the famous steampunk one. Worth seeing, genuinely good coffee, gets very crowded.
- De Waterkant is a lovely area to just wander into for a coffee.
Restaurants
- Grand Africa Café & Beach at Granger Bay. Feet in the sand, sunset over the Atlantic. The food is fine, the setting is the point.
- Africa Café on Heritage Square for a proper pan-African tasting spread, or pick from CapeTownMagazine’s top African restaurants.
- The Pot Luck Club at the Old Biscuit Mill, small plates with a view over the city. Book ahead. (Its more famous sibling, The Test Kitchen, closed permanently in 2021.)
- The Shortmarket Club remains one of my favourites in town.
- Several of the Winelands estates cook at a very high level, La Colombe among them. Check EatOut for what is currently good.
Bars
Bree Street is the densest concentration of good drinking on the continent, and you can genuinely just walk it and pick doors. Orphanage, The Gin Bar, House of Machines (coffee by day, cocktails and live music by night), Charango for Peruvian, Cause Effect. Kloof Street is the other strip worth walking, with Asoka and Yours Truly on it.
Markets
- Neighbourgoods Market at the Old Biscuit Mill, Saturday mornings. The busiest and most famous. Music, crafts, a lot of food.
- V&A Waterfront Market, mostly local produce and excellent for a slow breakfast or a recovery brunch.
- Hout Bay Market, Sundays. Pair it with the seal island boat trip or fold it into a Cape Point day.
Hiking
The cable car takes you to the 1,078m Table Mountain station, and that is the obvious one. But my personal favourite is Lion’s Head, the peak sitting between the city and the mountain, reachable only on foot. Roughly 45 minutes each way from the guarded parking area: a well-made gravel path at first, then a properly sporty scramble near the top. The reward is an unbroken 360-degree view. Sunrise, sunset or full moon are all excellent. Take a head torch if you go late.
Signal Hill is the no-effort version: drive up, watch the sun go down.
Day trips
1. The Cape Peninsula loop
The one unmissable day. Leave in the morning heading for Muizenberg and go clockwise around the peninsula. Penguins at Boulders Beach, the Cape Point National Park, the short walk up to the lighthouse, the obligatory photo at the Cape of Good Hope sign. Stop in Kalk Bay, a small fishing village with good shops and better people-watching.
Do not leave the return too late, because you want to drive Chapman’s Peak Pass into the sunset. It is one of the great coastal roads anywhere. It drops you into Hout Bay, a pretty harbour town, where Mariner’s Wharf and the Dunes are both easy stops. Hout Bay also works on its own as a half-day escape, and the World of Birds and Monkey Park there is better than it sounds.
If you want to do the drive properly, hire a Cobra replica from Cobra Car Hire. Mention my name. Best R150k I ever spent was buying one of my own.
Coming back, stop in Camps Bay for a sundowner. During the day, the wind-sheltered Clifton beaches (I through IV) are the best in the city, and the water at Bakoven is relatively warm by Atlantic standards.
2. Winelands and wine tasting
Do this. Organised tours leave around 9am and have you back by 5pm, which means nobody has to stay sober. I did mine with a very good operator aimed at a younger crowd, reachable on +27 73 755 0444 (they will remember the after-tasting-tour party at Randolf’s). For sheer quality, Didier at cheeseandwine.co.za is meant to be outstanding, and he also runs cheese-making courses: +27 73 613 2561.
Stellenbosch and Franschhoek are the two obvious bases. If you go to Franschhoek, arrive hungry and with a restaurant reservation. I have never regretted anything more than walking through that town already full from a previous stop.
3. Beaches, surfing and the west coast strip
Muizenberg is where you learn to surf, with board rental right on the beach. Big Bay and Bloubergstrand are the kitesurfing and wind-sport side of town, and give you the postcard view of Table Mountain across the bay.
4. Scarborough
Exactly one hour from the city, and it feels like a different country. Drive there along the beaches of Hout Bay, Noordhoek and Kommetjie. A weekend there is one of my favourite things to do.
Longer trips (more than 2 hours’ drive)
Safari
Forget Kruger, it is on the other side of the country. The best-known private game reserve within reach of Cape Town is Aquila. Ask about multi-night packages and discounts rather than booking the rack rate.
Garden Route
I have no special insight here beyond what any guidebook gives you. Hermanus for whale watching is lovely, either as a long day trip or as a stop on the way. Whale season runs roughly July to November. At the far end, 800km out, Addo Elephant Park is genuinely worth it for the sheer number of elephants. For everything except elephants, neighbouring Schotia is the better game reserve, and comparable to Aquila. Friends of my mother, Elke Stanglow-Jorberg, get 20% off there, so mention her name when you book.
West Coast (my actual favourite)
North towards Namibia, and the wilder, far less touristy alternative to the Garden Route. The beach at Yzerfontein is striking, Paternoster is idyllic, and Langebaan is deservedly popular with beginner kitesurfers and has a good spread of activities and places to stay, including Black Eagle Brewery.
I had the single best seafood experience of my life at Strandloper, an open-air beach feast that runs for hours. If it is booked out, Boesmanland Farm Kitchen is its own kind of experience. And in flower season, roughly August into September, the West Coast National Park is spectacular.
Townships, and seeing the whole city
Plenty of operators run township tours. The one I rate is Camissa, which is fully black-owned. That is unfortunately still unusual in Cape Town, where a lot of African-sounding tour companies turn out to be owned by the same privileged minority as everything else.
Everyone I know who was nervous that these tours would feel voyeuristic came away feeling the opposite. What you actually see is that life in the townships is not simply misery, it is far more layered than that. For the food-and-music version, Mzoli’s in Gugulethu is the legendary shisa nyama, where the braai, the butchery and the party are the same establishment.
If you would rather give something than look at something, two places close to my heart: Baphumelele in Khayelitsha, co-founded by the parents of a childhood friend of mine, and The Bridge, a children’s home in Hout Bay that I support directly.
Where to stay
Honestly the hardest question to answer, because when did anyone last ask you for a hotel recommendation in your own home town? I am not a fan of the big standardised chains, so my advice is a private place with some character on Airbnb (referral link) or a guesthouse or B&B. South African B&Bs are generally very well run.
Which area: most visitors will want to be on the Atlantic Seaboard (Green Point, Sea Point, or Camps Bay about 10km out), in Tamboerskloof or Gardens, or right in the lively city centre (the CBD). Bloubergstrand and Milnerton really only make sense if you are here for the wind sports. Go south to the beautiful towns of Hout Bay, Fish Hoek or Simon’s Town and you are committing to 40 minutes-plus each way, considerably more in rush hour.
Spotted something that has closed, moved or gone downhill? Tell me and I will fix it. There is also a German version of this page.