On the cooler, greener eastern flank of Table Mountain lie the Southern Suburbs, a string of leafy, well-watered neighbourhoods — Newlands, Rondebosch, Claremont, Constantia — that feel a world away from the city centre and the windswept Atlantic coast. This is old, established Cape Town: oak-lined avenues, gabled Cape Dutch manor houses, private schools and the University of Cape Town's ivy-clad campus climbing the slopes above the M3.
Newlands is the sporting heart of the city, home to the famous cricket ground with Table Mountain as its backdrop and the rugby stadium next door, as well as the country's oldest brewery, fed by a mountain spring. Above it all spreads Kirstenbosch, one of the world's great botanical gardens, where indigenous fynbos and forest run straight up into the mountain. Further south, the historic wine estate of Groot Constantia — the oldest in South Africa, planted in the 1680s — still produces the sweet Constantia wine once prized by European courts.
The mood here is genteel and green rather than scenic-dramatic: shaded gardens, farm-style restaurants, vineyards and forest walks. It rewards a slower day, ideally built around Kirstenbosch, a wine tasting at Constantia, or a match at Newlands.