Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
Rainy Day Cape Town: Where to Hide From the Weather
16
items The mountain has vanished behind the clouds and the rain is coming down sideways. Here's where to shelter, snack and stay entertained until the sun comes back out.
Map
Sections
4
Warm and quiet
Shop and browse
Move around, stay dry
Long lunch, no rush
Warm and quiet
Old velvet seats and a bar that pours wine before the film even starts. Pick something you've never heard of and just go with it.
The Labia Theatre
Half coffee shop, half film set, gears on the walls, leather everywhere. Order something strong, claim a corner, and let the weather turn into background noise.
Truth Coffee
Floor-to-ceiling books and that good musty smell. Go in looking for one thing, accept you'll leave with three, and let the rain become someone else's problem for an hour.
Clarke's Bookshop (Long Street)
Shop and browse
Three creaky floors, a proper maze, and the smell of leather and wood the second you walk in. Chat to the sellers, bargain a little, leave with something you have no plan for.
Pan African Market (Long Street)
Two floors of local design and homeware. Go in with no list, come out with something you didn't know you needed and a story about who made it.
The Watershed
Ask for the free studio tour, don't skip it. You watch actual artists twisting wire into elephants and radios right in front of you, then try to leave without buying something small and ridiculous.
Streetwires (Church Street)
You know that feeling when you duck into somewhere on a whim and it turns out to be the best twenty minutes of your day? That's this place. It's tiny, it's free, and it's stuffed with 17th-century Dutch paintings in a building so pretty it almost dis...
Michaelis Collection
Move around, stay dry
An actual ice rink, in Cape Town. Rent skates, wobble for the first ten minutes, pretend you meant to fall. Ridiculous in the best way.
The Ice Station GrandWest Casino
Chalk on your hands, a wall taller than you expected, coffee waiting at the bottom for when your arms give out. Beginners genuinely welcome here.
CityROCK (Paarden Eiland)
This one surprises people. It looks like "old building, skip it" from the outside, but the second you're inside the walls it feels like a proper fortress, because it is one. Time it for noon if you can, there's a gun that goes off and a key ceremony ...
Castle of good hope
Worth the drive out, trust me. It used to be a prison, which you'd never guess now, it's all white walls, local art and a clay museum where you can actually buy the pieces. Then you sit in the courtyard café with a glass of Durbanville wine and sudde...
Rust-en-vrede Gallery and Clay Museum
Give this one a full afternoon, not an hour. Contemporary African art across several floors at the Waterfront, easy to lose track of time in.
Zeitz MOCAA
Go in expecting a museum, come out thinking about it for days. This is the one that actually explains the city, not just shows it to you.
District Six Museum
Long lunch, no rush
Start with coffee at one stall, get talked into a pastry two doors down, somehow end up having lunch somewhere you didn't plan on. Built for exactly this kind of aimless grazing.
Woodstock Exchange
Walk in undecided, walk out stuffed. Pick a table and let someone else in your group choose dessert.
Old Biscuit Mill (Test Kitchen precinct)
Coffee and eggs in the morning, drinks and a crowd by evening, and somewhere in between you lose track of which one it's become. Grab a table, order slowly, and let a rainy afternoon turn into an accidental long lunch.
Yours Truly