Kalk Bay

Kalk Bay is the most charming village on the Cape Peninsula — a fishing harbour and main street of antique shops, bookshops, cafés, and restaurants wedged between the mountain and False Bay that has evolved from a working fishing village into a creative community without losing the harbour that gives it character. The fishing boats still land their catch at the harbour every morning, and the quayside fish sales — where fishermen sell their catch directly from the boats to a queue of locals and restaurant buyers — are as authentic a food experience as Cape Town offers.

Olympia Café, a single-room restaurant on Main Road that has been serving Mediterranean-influenced breakfasts and lunches since 1995, is consistently rated among the best cafés in Cape Town. The Brass Bell, a pub on the rocks beside the railway line (so close that the train passes within metres of your table), serves seafood and beer with views across False Bay that are the definition of casual. The antique shops along Main Road — cluttered, eclectic, and staffed by people who know their stock — contain the kind of vintage finds that the Woodstock shops sell at twice the price.

The harbour's wave pool — a tidal pool carved into the rocks at the harbour's edge — is the most unusual swimming spot in Cape Town: a natural pool filled by wave action, heated by the sun on the surrounding rocks, and used by a daily community of swimmers who gather at dawn regardless of the weather. Kalk Bay is accessible by the Southern Line train, and the ride from central Cape Town along the coast — passing Muizenberg, St James, and the rocky shoreline of False Bay — is one of the most scenic commuter rail journeys in the world.