Cape Town chronicles

Cape Town, also known as Kaapstaad (in Afrikaans) and nicknamed as Mother City, can be more aptly called the mother of all cities! Framed by the mammoth Table mountain, with the sapphire blue waters of Table Bay, excellent beaches in Camps Bay, Clifton & Hout Bay and the world renowned Cape Winelands, you will be hard pressed to find another city that offers so much! And I haven’t even mentioned the great white shark diving, penguins in Simonstown and the safaris all within driving distance. We visited Cape Town on our honeymoon, and it’s a city we would go back to in a heartbeat.

I’m splitting the blog in two parts, this post covering the city, and the second one is about driving around the Cape Peninsula: the stunning coastal drives, cape of good hope and Simonstown.

Getting around

Cape Town isn’t the most pedestrian or public transport friendly city in the world, unless you are walking in and around the V&A Waterfront. Ubers are cheap though and highly recommended for getting around. I”m usually the biggest critic of hop on hop off bus tours, but this is a city which is an exception to the rule. It’s very reasonably priced and they offer 3 tours (city tour, coast tour and the excellent winelands tour!). A single ticket allows you to mix and match between all three, and is an excellent yet affordable way to discover all tha Cape Town has to offer. However as soon as you plan to explore the Capelands outside the capital, a rental car is a must. We hired a car for a couple of days when we were visiting the surrounding areas (more of that in the second part of the blog). 

Things to do

The iconic Table mountain lords over Cape Town, and it’s hard to miss wherever you are in the city. No visit to the city will be complete without getting to the top for the stunning views of the city and surrounding waters. There are two ways to get to the top, a cable car for the lazies, or you can do a fairly decent hike (~2 hours one way) to the top. Either ways, the views are gorgeous. While walking around at the top, look out for the distinctively shaped Lions Head and Signal Hill. Fair warning, the weather at the bottom and top can be poles apart, so take a light jacket along even if you’re visiting in summer. The cable car station is on the hop-on hop-off bus route so it’s an easy place to get from anywhere in the city.

The colorful neighborhood of Bo-Kaap should be next on your list. It is located towards the southwest of the city center and is the locality where Malay-muslim descendants of slave have lived in. Wear sunglasses to protect you not only from the sun but the blazing bright array of colors the houses are painted in!

As you walk around, shades of pink, purple, green and yellow will greet you around every corner. It’s a great place for a photoshoot, but bear in mind that people do live here so be respectful. If you want to know more about the history, do drop in to the excellent Bo-Kaap museum. 

As evening approaches, hop onto the bus again and get down at either Camps Bay or Clifton to enjoy a tipple at the many shacks that line the beaches while the sky turns golden. Afterwards, hop on to the bus again and make your way to the city center and head over to the V&A Waterfront. Popular with tourists because of a huge number of restaurants and shops, it is a bit glitzy but you get your pick of restaurants especially after a busy day. Cape Town has a burgeoning dining scene, though unsurprisingly all the good places are scattered in the city neighborhoods. Few of the best are Mariams Kitchen, Black Sheep, The Test Kitchen and Pigalle. 

If there is one thing you should definitely splurge on in Cape Town, it is a helicopter tour. The city is stunning from the sky, with the incredible Table Mountain rising like a wall and usually covered with clouds which seem like a white tablecloth covering the mountain which complements the deep blue bay surrounding the city extremely well. Go during the morning when the water looks the bluest and you won’t be disappointed. The 30 min ride is a long enough duration to cover most of the sights, including the stunning beaches on both sides of the Cape. We went with NAC Helicopters, and I would highly recommend them, very reasonable and great service. The tour we did was this one, about 25 mins flying time and about ~500USD total. Pricey, yes, but you get your money’s worth. Plus they end with a round of champagne which is always great!

After the high of the helicopter ride, it’s time for another kind of high! I doubt that there are many cities in the world where a hop-on hop-off bus has a wine tour as part of its free itinerary. Lucky for you, Cape Town is one of them. Take the blue line to the Constantia bus stop and change over to the purple line that takes you to three wineries in the Cape Winelands region. Our favorite was the Groot Constantia which has a regal looking manor and some great wines to taste. Definitely try the Pinotage, a red blend exclusive to this region. Also, the wine tastings are incredibly cheap (if I remember, around $2-3 per glass), so you’ll get drunk pretty fast!!

Post wine-o’clock, head to the nearby Kirstenbosch botanical gardens nestled in the foot of Table mountain. With its strong emphasis on cultivation of indigenous plants, this is one of the most popular places for locals and tourists alike to hang out. The expansive gardens are a great place to spend the evenings as you build up an appetite for dinner! 

Where to stay

We had to plan this trip very last moment (I know, it was our honeymoon, but we had a real vacation crunch, plus we had some issues applying for visas, we literally didn’t know if we would be able to go till a couple of days before our flight) so long story short, all the good hotels were sold out. It didn’t help that we were going during Christmas time, the busiest time of the year for Cape Town. Plus, we had a packed wedding schedule, spread over ten days and 3 cities, so this was one of our least researched trips. In Cape Town, we stayed at the Westin. The stay was all right, it’s your standard business hotel, bereft of character. Next time I go, I’d either stay at a boutique hotel, an airbnb or even better, rent a place a little far from the city with sweeping views of the bay! My biggest accomplishment of the trip in terms of lodging actually was the one night we stayed in Simonstown (I’ve reviewed the hotel separately here).

Cape Town though compact is blessed with a great variety of things to keep you busy, right from food and wine all the way to nature and culture. This post was just about the city, but the surrounding Cape Peninsula is equally spectacular. Read about our how to explore that part here, along with details of the amazing road trip we undertook to explore the Cape!