What to Do in Cape Town

Non-negotiable. Table Mountain is 600 million years old, flat-topped, and visible from almost everywhere in the city. The cable car rotates 360 degrees on the way up, which is either thrilling or terrifying depending on your relationship with heights. The top is surprisingly large with walking trails, cafes, dassies (furry creatures that look like guinea pigs but are related to elephants), and views that stretch from the city bowl to Robben Island. You can also hike up via Platteklip Gorge (steep, 2 to 3 hours, your legs will hate you the next day) or Skeleton Gorge from Kirstenbosch (longer but through forest). Go on a clear day. On a cloudy day, you pay full price to sit inside a white room. Early morning or late afternoon is best; midday brings queues and cloud cover.

The full loop from Cape Town down to the Cape of Good Hope and back is one of the best day drives in the world, and that's not an exaggeration. Chapman's Peak is the star: a road carved into a cliff face with the Atlantic hundreds of meters below, somehow both terrifying and beautiful at the same time. The Cape of Good Hope itself isn't the southernmost point of Africa (that's Cape Agulhas), but nobody cares once they're standing at the edge of the continent watching waves crash into rocks. The hike to the old lighthouse takes about 30 minutes and gives you a view of the whole peninsula behind you. Drive the Atlantic side down and return via False Bay. Stop at Kalk Bay for fish and chips, Simon's Town for penguins, and Noordhoek for the beach. Rushing this drive should be a criminal offense.

Yes, penguins in Africa. A colony of African penguins lives at Boulders Beach near Simon's Town, and watching them waddle around the sand, swim in the shallows, and generally carry on with their lives is one of those experiences that's impossible not to enjoy. Most of them are completely indifferent to the humans staring at them from the boardwalk. Some, however, are not. A few of the penguins are aggressive little creatures who will come at you and bite if they decide you're in their space. They're adorable right up until they're not. The boardwalk keeps you at a safe distance from the main colony, which is both respectful to the birds and a smart move for your ankles. The beach itself, with its smooth granite boulders and clear water, is beautiful even without the wildlife.

Kirstenbosch sits on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain and is one of the great botanical gardens of the world. The setting alone justifies the visit: manicured gardens backed by the mountain's forested slopes, with paths winding through fynbos, cycads, and a canopy walkway (the "Boomslang") that curves through the treetops and gives you views across the garden to the city. It's the kind of place where you plan to spend an hour and end up staying three. The garden is also the trailhead for Skeleton Gorge, one of the best hiking routes up Table Mountain, so you can combine a garden visit with a serious hike if you're feeling ambitious. Summer sunset concerts on the lawn are a Cape Town institution. Bring a picnic blanket and a bottle of something local.

Robben Island is where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison, and visiting it is one of the most powerful experiences Cape Town offers. The ferry takes 30 minutes from the V&A Waterfront. Tours are led by former political prisoners, which makes the whole thing land differently than reading a plaque in a museum. You stand in Mandela's cell, which is small enough to touch opposite walls at the same time, and you listen to someone who lived through it tell you what happened there. It's heavy. It's important. And it puts the rest of your Cape Town trip in a context that the pretty beaches and wine farms don't provide on their own.

Bo-Kaap is the neighborhood on the slopes of Signal Hill with the brightly colored houses that show up on every Cape Town Instagram post and travel brochure. But it's not a set piece built for tourists. The Cape Malay community has lived here since the 1760s, descendants of enslaved people brought from Southeast Asia by the Dutch. The colors are real, the food is incredible, and the Bo-Kaap Museum gives you the history behind the postcard. Walk the cobblestone streets, eat Cape Malay curry and samoosas, and try the koeksisters and dhaltjies. If you leave without eating something, you did it wrong. The neighborhood is gentrifying fast, and longtime residents are fighting to stay. It's worth knowing that context while you're there.

Stellenbosch and Franschhoek are less than an hour from Cape Town and produce wine that competes globally. The landscape looks like someone designed a wine region from scratch and forgot to include any flaws: Cape Dutch farmhouses, vineyards against mountain backdrops, oak-lined streets. Tastings are absurdly cheap by international standards, 50 to 150 rand (3 to 8 euros) for a flight of five or six wines, and some estates waive the fee if you buy a bottle. You will leave with more bottles than you planned for. Everyone does. Stellenbosch has the most estates and a charming walkable town center. Franschhoek is smaller, more polished, and calls itself the food and wine capital of South Africa with enough justification to get away with it. The food at both is excellent.

Lion's Head is the conical peak next to Table Mountain, and hiking it for sunset is one of the best things you can do in Cape Town. The trail takes about an hour up and spirals around the peak with 360-degree views of the city, Table Mountain, Camps Bay, and the Atlantic. The final section has chains and ladders bolted into the rock, which sounds more dramatic than it is but does get the heart rate up. The summit at sunset is a communal experience: locals and visitors sit on the rocks with wine and snacks, watching the sun drop into the Atlantic while Table Mountain turns gold behind them. It's special. Bring a headlamp for the descent, because it gets dark fast once the sun goes and you do not want to be navigating chains in the dark without one.

Muizenberg is where Cape Town surfs. The waves are gentle and forgiving, which makes it the best place in the city to learn. Surf schools line the beachfront and will have you standing up on a board within an hour or two, or at least falling off with style. The colorful beach huts are the most photographed things on the False Bay side and they really are as cheerful in person as they look in pictures. The water on this side is warmer than the Atlantic (which is a low bar, but still). Beyond the surfing, Muizenberg has a relaxed, slightly bohemian character that's a welcome change from the more polished parts of Cape Town. Grab a coffee, walk the beach, and enjoy the fact that you're not in Camps Bay paying three times as much for everything.

District Six was a vibrant, mixed community of 60,000 people in central Cape Town. During apartheid, the entire neighborhood was declared a whites-only area. Everyone was forcibly removed. The buildings were bulldozed. Today, the land is still mostly empty, a scar in the middle of the city that the government never managed to fill with anything meaningful. The District Six Museum, housed in a former church, preserves what was lost: photographs, street signs, personal belongings, and the memories of people who lived there. Former residents sometimes volunteer as guides, which makes the experience deeply personal. It's not a cheerful visit, but it's an important one. You'll understand Cape Town differently after seeing it.