Cape Town, Rondebosch and the Rhodes Memorial

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South of Rosebank, neighbouring Rondebosch is home to the University of Cape Town (UCT), whose nineteenth-century buildings are handsomely festooned with creepers and sit grandly on the mountainside, overlooking Main Road and the M3 highway.


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Next to the campus, north towards the city, is the conspicuous Rhodes Memorial, built to resemble a Greek temple.
The monument celebrates Cecil Rhodes with a sculpture of a wildly rearing horse, and the empire-builder's bust is planted at the top of a towering set of stairs.


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Herds of wildebeest and zebra nonchalantly graze on the slopes around the Memorial as cars fly past on the M3,  and the Tea Garden offers terrific views of Cape Town.


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Cape Town, Company's Gardens

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Stretching from the South African Library to the South African Museum, the Company's Gardens were the initial raison d'etre for the Dutch settlement at the Cape.


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Established in 1652 to supply fresh greens to Dutch East India Company ships travelling between the Netherlands and the East, the gardens were initially worked by imported slave labour.


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At the end of the seventeenth century, the gardens were turned over to botanical horticulture for Cape Town's growing colonial elite.

Ponds, lawns, landscaping and a crisscross web of oak-shaded walkways were introduced.

Today the gardens are full of local plants, the result of long-standing European interest in Cape botany, and are a pleasant place to meander, featuring a pleasantly shady outdoor café.


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Cape Town, The Great Synagogue

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The Great Synagogue is one of Cape Town's outstanding religious buildings.
Designed by the Scottish architect Parker & Forsyth and completed in 1905, its facade features two soaring towers after the style of central European Baroque churches.


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The interior is dominated by an impressive copper-clad dome that arches over an alcove containing religious objects and beautifully decorated with golden mosaics.

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Cape Town Stadium

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Described by British architecture critic Jonathan Glancey as "a stunning white apparition ...in a sublime setting", Cape Town Stadium is arguably the jewel in South Africa's 2010 FIFA World Cup crown.
The 68,000-seat stadium is fifteen floors high, with parking for twelve thousand cars in the basement.
It relies on natural light, and at night the open-meshed roof can glow to resemble an ethereal  UFO landed in Green Park.


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In 2011, once the final World Cup whistle had been blown, the Ajax Cape Town football team used it as their home ground and, in the same year, it was packed to the rafters when Irish rockers U2 came to town.


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Cape Town, Muizenberg

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Once South Africa's most fashionable beachfront, Muizenberg is now a bit run-down, though nothing detracts from the fact that it has a long, safe and fabulous beach that shelves gently, making it the most popular spot along the peninsula for swimming.


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It also has some terrific beachfront coffee shops that draw the crowds, especially over weekends.

The brightly coloured bathing boxes along the beach are reminders of a more elegant heyday, when the resort was visited by the likes of Agatha Christie, who enjoyed riding its waves while holidaying here in the 1920s:" Whenever we could steal time off", she wrote, "we got out our surf boards and went surfing".


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Cape Town, Boulders Beach

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Boulders Beach takes its name from its huge granite rocks, which create a cluster of little coves with sandy beaches and clear sea pools, which are gorgeous for swimming.

However, the main reason people come to Boulders' fenced seafront reserve is for the African penguins (formerly known as jackass penguins).


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African penguins usually live on islands off the west side of the South African coast, and the Boulders birds form one of only two mainland colonies in the world.

This is also the only place where the endangered species are actually increasing in numbers, and provides a rare opportunity to get a close look at them.


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Access to the Boulders reserve is through two gates, one at the Boulders Beach (eastern) end, off Bellevue Road and the other at the Seaforth Beach (western) side, off Seaforth Road.
Both entrances are signposted along Main Road between Simon's Town and Cape Point.


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At Seaforth, there's a small visitors' centre and deck, from which two boardwalks lead to either end of Foxy Beach where you'll see hundreds of penguins.


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Most people walk from Seaforth to Boulders, looking at all the penguins in the bushes along the paths, where there are masses of burrows for nesting..
At Seaforth itself, there is safe swimming on the beach, which is bounded on one side by the looming grey mass of the naval base.
While there are no facilities of any kind on Boulders Beach, there is a restaurant with outdoor  seating and fresh fish on the menu at both of the entrances to Boulders.


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Cape Town, Adderley Street

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Once the place to shop in Cape Town, Adderley Street, lined with handsome buildings from several centuries, is still worth a stroll today.
Its attractive streetscape has been blemished somewhat by a series of large 1960s and 1970s shopping centres but, just minutes from crowded malls, among the streets and alleys around Greenmarket square, you can still find some human scale and historic texture.

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One of the ugliest buildings erected in the 1970s is the Golden Acre shopping complex, dominating the north (harbour) end of Adderley Street, which is a hub for much of Cape Town's public transport.

Although the mall itself and its environs are anything but picturesque, here you do get an authentic taste of ordinary Capetonians doing their shopping.

Among the pavements and pedestrianized section outside, which run down to the station, there's a closely packed flea market offering curios, crafts and electronic goods.

A little further south lies the Adderley Street Flower Market at Trafalgar Place, in Adderley Street between Strand and Darling streets, run by members of the Bo-Kaap Muslim community, who are known for their sharp wit.

Continuing south, two grandiose bank buildings stand on opposite sides of Adderley Street: the fussier of the two, the erstwhile Standard Bank, fronted by Corinthian columns and covered with a tall dome -  a temple to the partnership of empire and finance - is now an upmarket restaurant and coffee shop.

The First National Bank, completed in 1913, was the last South African building designed by Sir Herbert Baker.


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