Cape Town’s most photographed hotel restaurant isn’t the one some guides still describe, and getting it right matters more than the recycled version once did. The Silo Hotel, correctly Its restaurants are the Granary Café, the Willaston Bar, the Silo Rooftop, and the Wisdom Room, and the executive chef is Veronica Canha-Hibbert. No restaurant in South Africa holds a Michelin star, since the guide’s inspectors don’t operate on the continent at all.

A safari extension from Cape Town works if you frame it honestly: not a long day, but a flight followed by a proper stay somewhere else entirely. Kruger, and what it actually takes Kruger National Park is a direct flight of roughly 2 hours 25 minutes from Cape Town to Skukuza, about 1,603km, not a quick hop and not a day trip under any transport mode. The honest version of this trip is 2 to 4 or more nights at a lodge, giving the flight time and the game drives room to actually pay off.

Boulders Beach’s penguins look like a photo op and function, these days, as something closer to a conservation visit, and that distinction is worth explaining to kids before you arrive, not after. Boulders Beach penguin colony African penguins here were reclassified Critically Endangered by the IUCN in late 2024, one step above extinct in the wild, after a roughly 97 percent historic population decline; the older endangered label undersells how urgent this has become.

Cape Town rewards walking more than almost any other way of seeing it, and one specific stretch of that walking carries a real, well-documented safety risk worth naming plainly rather than skating past. Bo-Kaap and the City Bowl The Malay Quarter’s cobbled streets and coloured facades, Greenmarket Square, and Long Street make a genuinely walkable, mostly free route through the city’s oldest neighbourhoods, distinct from a bus-based tour that only slows down for photos.

Not every day trip near Cape Town needs a rental car, but most of them do, and guessing wrong wastes a morning waiting for a bus that isn’t coming. Cape Point and the Peninsula loop: needs a car or a tour There’s no meaningful public transport for the loop as a whole. Self-drive via the toll Chapman’s Peak Drive (roughly R60 for a standard car) or book a full-day guided tour instead.

A booked Table Mountain cableway ticket feels like a guarantee, and it isn’t one. Wind closes the ride at short notice, sometimes for a whole day, so build slack into the schedule around it rather than around anything else. Table Mountain Aerial Cableway Online prices run adult return R475 or one-way R300, child (4 to 17) return R230 or one-way R165, and SA senior citizens R130 return or R70 one-way; only tablemountain.

Table Mountain’s cableway gets all the attention, but the mountain rewards people willing to use their legs, and Cape Town’s activity list runs well past one ride to the top. Platteklip Gorge: the free way up Skip the cable car and climb instead. Platteklip Gorge starts at the lower cableway station on Tafelberg Road and climbs straight up the mountain’s face to the summit in roughly 2 to 3 hours. It is steep, rocky, and almost entirely unshaded, so an early start and a full water bottle matter more than fitness.

Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use. Safety first: Johannesburg has real crime risk (armed robbery, carjacking, smash-and-grab at red lights), but it isn’t a no-go city. Use Uber or Bolt instead of walking, especially downtown or after dark; take the Gautrain for the OR Tambo-Sandton-Pretoria run; keep car doors locked and stay alert at traffic lights; don’t display phones or valuables; and see Soweto and the inner city on a guided tour, not solo.

Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use. Safety first: Johannesburg has real crime risk (armed robbery, carjacking, smash-and-grab at red lights), but it isn’t a no-go city. Use Uber or Bolt instead of walking, especially downtown or after dark; take the Gautrain for the OR Tambo-Sandton-Pretoria run; keep car doors locked and stay alert at traffic lights; don’t display phones or valuables; and see Soweto and the inner city on a guided tour, not solo.

Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use. Safety first: Johannesburg has real crime risk (armed robbery, carjacking, smash-and-grab at red lights), but it isn’t a no-go city. Use Uber or Bolt instead of walking, especially downtown or after dark; take the Gautrain for the OR Tambo-Sandton-Pretoria run; keep car doors locked and stay alert at traffic lights; don’t display phones or valuables; and see Soweto and the inner city on a guided tour, not solo.

Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use. Safety first: Johannesburg has real crime risk (armed robbery, carjacking, smash-and-grab at red lights), but it isn’t a no-go city. Use Uber or Bolt instead of walking, especially downtown or after dark; take the Gautrain for the OR Tambo-Sandton-Pretoria run; keep car doors locked and stay alert at traffic lights; don’t display phones or valuables; and see Soweto and the inner city on a guided tour, not solo.

Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use. Safety first: Johannesburg has real crime risk (armed robbery, carjacking, smash-and-grab at red lights), but it isn’t a no-go city. Use Uber or Bolt instead of walking, especially downtown or after dark; take the Gautrain for the OR Tambo-Sandton run; keep car doors locked and stay alert at traffic lights; don’t display phones or valuables; and see Soweto and the inner city on a guided tour, not solo.

Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use. Safety first: Johannesburg has real crime risk (armed robbery, carjacking, smash-and-grab at red lights), but it isn’t a no-go city. Use Uber or Bolt instead of walking, especially downtown or after dark; take the Gautrain for the OR Tambo-Sandton run; keep car doors locked and stay alert at traffic lights; don’t display phones or valuables; and see Soweto and the inner city on a guided tour, not solo.

Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use. Johannesburg’s festival calendar leans on national public holidays as much as ticketed events, which is good news for a budget trip: Heritage Day, Freedom Day, and Youth Day cost nothing to experience beyond a Gautrain fare and get you the real cultural calendar rather than a tourist-priced substitute.

Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use. Safety first: hiking areas around Johannesburg are genuinely lower-risk than downtown, but don’t treat that as a reason to skip the basics. Go in a group, stick to marked trails, hike in daylight, and let someone know your route and return time.

Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use. Johannesburg is one of the largest human-made urban forests in the world, an often-quoted figure of around 6 million trees, and the six spots below are the real, free or cheap payoff of that. None of these need a car rental or a day-trip budget; most are a Gautrain or Uber ride from the city centre.

Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use. None of the eight spots below cost more than a modest entry fee, and half are free. The best single shot in the city is also the cheapest: the Carlton Centre’s rooftop deck, still one of the highest viewpoints in Africa for a few rand.

Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use. Safety first: all five day trips below get you well outside the parts of Johannesburg with real crime risk, but the getting-there still matters. Use a reputable tour operator, a rental car with the doors locked, or the Gautrain where it applies.

Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use. Safety first: Johannesburg’s real crime risk is worth naming plainly, especially for gems in the inner city and townships. Use Uber or Bolt rather than walking, keep car doors locked and stay alert at traffic lights, and don’t display phones or valuables.

Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use. You don’t need a big food budget in Johannesburg. A shisa nyama plate of grilled meat with pap and chakalaka runs a fraction of what a Sandton steakhouse charges, the Saturday Neighbourgoods Market feeds you well for well under R200, and even the sit-down places below are mid-range by international standards.

Heads up: some links here are affiliate links. Book or buy through them and we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only point you to things we would actually use. Safety first: Johannesburg has real crime risk (armed robbery, carjacking, smash-and-grab at red lights), but it isn’t a no-go city. Millions of people visit every year without incident by following a few rules: take Uber or Bolt instead of walking, especially downtown or after dark; use the Gautrain for the OR Tambo, Sandton, and Pretoria run; keep car doors locked and stay alert at traffic lights; don’t leave phones or bags visible in the car; and see Soweto and the inner city on a guided tour rather than solo.