Cape Town

Cape Town is what happens when a two-billion-year-old flat-topped mountain, a bright bay and a hinge of world history agree to share an address. Table Mountain wears its cloud tablecloth over a city bowl of Victorian verandas and glass towers; the Atlantic argues with itself around the peninsula; and in the bay sits Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent eighteen of his twenty-seven prison years — the ferry crossing and the tour, guided by former prisoners, is the most necessary half-day in the southern hemisphere, and this Guide holds it in dignity.

The traveller rides or — better, with legs and a weather eye — climbs the mountain via Platteklip Gorge; walks the Bo-Kaap's colored streets and eats Cape Malay bobotie where it was invented; does the V&A honestly (it is touristy and it is lovely; both are true); drives the peninsula loop past the Twelve Apostles to Boulders' penguin colony and the Cape of Good Hope; gives Kirstenbosch a slow afternoon; and surrenders a day to the winelands, forty minutes and one century away.

The Guide's practical counsel: the city asks area-by-area street sense — ask your hosts which walks at which hours, use ride apps at night, and hike the mountain in company with layers and water, because its weather is a moody genius —; the summer southeaster called the Cape Doctor will steal hats and improve air; book Robben Island days ahead and the cableway by weather window; and autumn — March to May — is the connoisseur's season, when the wind rests and the light turns to honey.