Kensington Place

The way into Kensington Place is up a flight of pale stone steps to an open door in a wall of timber slats, with bougainvillea spilling over the roof above it. Behind it are eight rooms, hung with art commissioned locally, and staying in one felt like being a guest in somebody's very fancy home.

We came for two nights in March, after a wedding out in the Winelands and before the flight back to New York. Every earlier trip to Cape Town had kept us in Camps Bay, so this time the city itself was the point, and as a base for it Higgovale was a great one. The suburb sits on the slopes between Oranjezicht and Tamboerskloof, looking out over the city to the Atlantic. The Table Mountain trailheads are within walking distance, and the V&A Waterfront is ten minutes away.

Which category of room we had, we cannot now remember. Ours was on the first floor, very large and bright, with a lovely terrace, and as comfortable as it was big. Both kinds the hotel sells, Superior and Standard, come with a terrace or balcony of their own, which is the thing to want here. Breakfast is cooked to order from half past seven, included in the rate, and served in the dining room or out on the balconies. Guests' reviews speak well of the cooking, and of the quiet away from the noise of downtown and the Waterfront.

The pool is small: a rectangle of blue let into a timber deck, with a dark pergola hung with pale curtains at one end and the mountain's rock face above the trees. Nobody would spend a whole day beside it working down a drinks list. We thought it perfect for what it is for, which is an hour with a book in the morning before going out into Cape Town, or a cool-off in the afternoon before dinner and a drink on Kloof Street, among its restaurants and bars.

For days out, the concierge arranges tours and airport transfers from the hotel's own list: Cape Point and the peninsula, Table Mountain, the Bo-Kaap, the Winelands, which we had just come from, and whale watching near Hermanus, from August to November only, so a March stay goes without.