Cape Town's best assets ask nothing of your wallet: a mountain you climb on foot, an 11km seafront promenade, tidal pools refilled by every high tide. Three days built on R50 curry plates, R14 MyCiTi hops and sunsets that cost the walk up.
The spiral path up the 669m peak starts at the Signal Hill Road trailhead and takes roughly 90 minutes up, ending in a chain-and-staple scramble. Open 24 hours, no gate, no permit — the cheapest Table Bay panorama in the city.
The 1652 Dutch East India vegetable plot is now six hectares of oak avenue, rose garden and Victorian glasshouse, open 07:00 to 19:00 daily. Grey squirrels mob anyone holding the R10 peanut bags sold at the gate.
Set in the old Buitenkant Street Methodist church, the museum maps the 60,000 people forcibly removed from District Six after 1966 onto a floor-sized street plan annotated in handwriting by former residents themselves.
An 11km paved seafront path from the Mouille Point lighthouse to Bantry Bay, lined with public sculpture, open-air gym stations and the ruins of Graaff's Pool. Locals run it at golden hour as the Atlantic hammers the rocks.
A smallholders' market on the Granger Bay hard beside the V&A, trading Saturdays 08:15 to 14:00 and Sundays 09:00 to 14:00. Entry is free and R50 to R80 covers a boerewors roll, a koesister or a bowl of Cape Malay curry.
A counter-service hole in the wall on the corner of Long and Hout streets building the Gatsby: a foot-long roll stacked with masala steak, slap chips and atchar, big enough to split four ways. Weekdays 08:00 to 17:00.
A cobbled square that served as a slave market in the 1690s, now packed Monday to Saturday 09:00 to 16:00 with traders selling Ndebele beadwork, Zimbabwean soapstone and Congolese masks. Opening prices run triple.
A halaal food court in the Wellington Fruit Growers building where nine open kitchens plate Indian, Turkish and Chinese food for R45 to R80. A lamb biryani with a mango lassi comes in under R100, served until 22:00.
The Metrorail Southern Line runs from Cape Town station along the False Bay shore, a R11 to R15 MetroPlus ticket for one of the world's great coastal rail rides. Muizenberg's painted beach huts stand 200m from the platform.
A working fishing harbour where trawlers offload snoek and yellowtail straight onto the quay each morning and Kalky's, at the far end, fries hake and chips for around R80. Cape fur seals loaf on the slipway for offcuts.
A rectangular pool cut into the rocks below the St James railway halt, flushed clean by every high tide and free to swim year-round. The row of candy-striped Victorian bathing boxes lines the sand directly behind it.
The hill road ends on a grass saddle 350m above the Atlantic, Lion's Head at your back and the whole Sea Point bowl below. No entry fee, gates shut at 22:00, and the Noon Gun fires from the slope beneath at 12:00 sharp.