Cape Town holidays: A guide to the best areas and hotels

Where to stay

• An insider guide to Cape Town

CITY BOWL

Flanked by Devil’s Peak to the east, and Lion’s Head and Signal Hill to the west, Table Mountain creates a natural amphitheatre the locals call the ‘city bowl’. The city’s oldest residential suburbs took root on these slopes, watered by mountain streams and offering spectacular city, mountain and harbour views. On the slopes of Signal Hill, Victorian and Edwardian Bo-Kaap and Tamboerskloof look across the city towards Table Mountain; leafy Higgovale, tucked into the crook of Kloof Nek, offers a grand cityscape framed by trees; Oranjezicht and Gardens, taking centre stage above the city, gaze across the twinkling harbour to lake-like Table Bay. Offering quick access to sites and beaches, and a superb choice of luxurious ‘house hotels’, the bowl has always been my preferred nest.

Where to stay

• The best hotels in Franschhoek

CITY CENTRE

A central location offers that wonderful pedestrian pleasure: stepping outside your hotel to stroll the streets for dinner, choosing your table as much for current ambience as menu, followed by a postprandial at a local bar. Belmond Mount Nelson and More Quarters offer the best of both worlds: quick access to the restaurants and bars that line Kloof street, yet located in Gardens, the residential suburb that fringes the business centre. But for a vantage on the city’s 300-year-old architectural layering, the inner city is it: book into Gorgeous George or Labotessa, historic buildings magnificently reimagined into contemporary design hotels.

Where to stay

• The best boutique hotels in Cape Town

WATERFRONT

The pedestrianised V&A Waterfront – a gentrification of the historical harbour and ongoing mixed-use developments – is popular with tourists wanting a safe, slightly sanitised experience of Cape Town. That said it’s still very much a working harbour, so there’s always something interesting happening on the water, and as a shopping or day outing is as popular with locals as it is with visitors exploring its distinctive precincts under wheeling seagulls. The latest precinct is centred on the Silo hotel, it’s newly iconic Heatherwick-designed façade atop the new Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art; adjacent is the Nelson Mandela Gateway, where ferries depart to Robben Island three to four times daily.

Where to stay

• The best hotels on Cape Town's waterfront

SOUTH PENINSULA

With the knobbly spine of Table Mountain National Park running its length, the Cape peninsula curves like a finger into the Atlantic, arching around the warmer waters and surfer-friendly beaches of False Bay. Historically, this was the preserve of the early farmer colonialists who settled on the well-watered slopes of Constantia, and wealthy turn-of-the-century randlords who chose to build their mansions on this balmier coastline. Eating fish and chips in one of these coastal enclaves, sampling Constantia wines, discovering fynbos in Kirstenbosch gardens, Boulders’ penguins, the windswept southwestern tip of Africa – these are all de rigeur stops while touring the south peninsula, and many return visitors prefer to base themselves here for the more laid-back vibe and grandeur of the views.

Where to stay

• The best luxury hotels in Cape Town

WINELANDS

I was once told that vines only grow where it’s beautiful, and that’s certainly true of the winelands that surround the city, particularly Franschhoek, where vineyard-carpeted mountain peaks surround a tiny valley with a dinky high street lined with galleries, restaurants and chi chi shops. You don’t have to be a wine lover to base yourself here (the city is 60 to 90 minutes away), but you’ll be bowled over if you are – hopping from historic Cape Dutch homesteads to contemporary tasting rooms, in extraordinary surrounds, you’ll be delighted by the variety of experiences and the quality of the wines. The Franschhoek wine tram is a fun way to do tastings, but if you want a more edifying experience, it’s definitely worth booking a private wine tour with an oenophile. It is also where some of the city’s most vaunted chefs are found.

Where to stay