We just finished up a 7 night stay here and we headed down the coast to two SLH affiliates.

First to clear up some comments up thread:

The neighborhood is just fine. I wish we hadn’t read about it being a bad neighborhood up thread as we waited to head east down Wale Street until the last day. There are some lovely promenades beginning with one at about 4 blocks with a lot of nice restaurants, shops and a square with lots of craft stands. At about 6 blocks east is the Parliament, museums and a lovely park. There is a great bazar just up Wale Street to the west and the hotel is right in Bo Kapp, a major tourist attraction known for its colorful houses.

Load shedding is not a problem at the hotel as it has full generator back-up. And load shedding is every where in South Africa, but I hear it is much worse in Joberg.

The lounge/club is nothing to write home about, but we didn’t come to South Africa for the lounge. Laila there was super friendly and helpful. In fact, all the staff at the hotel were super friendly and all went out of the way to assist us. We'll give Urchin Restaurant at the Hotel 4 stars and dined there three nights. The breakfast on the ground floor was very good and substantial.

We used a TSU for a super suite which appeared to have been recently updated; well worth the use of TSU. It appears that most of the suites (we didn't get one with two baths) are in the same location on each floor. We were on the first floor, actually about 4 floors up, and we only had a view of the pool and patio below. If you can get a high floor, you would probably have a good viewscape.

We were turned on to an incredible guide who took us on a full day tour of wine country near Franschhoek that puts Napa Valley to shame. His cost was 3,400 Rand (that is $186 for 2 people and we made it a point to over tip), which was 1/3 of the hotel booking price: Khayelitsha Travel & Tours. Loyiso, the owner, speaks 7 languages and was amazing. PM me for his WhatsAp number.

Since we were here on a free night, we received free parking and with that in mind, rented an Avis car, that with an upgrade, was a mid-zed SUV and was about $450 for 15 days. We used it a bit in and around Cape Town but also used Uber and Taxis as well during our stay. When we left, we drove to Hermanus (The Marine) and we are now at Plettenberg Bay (The Plettenberg). Both are amazing 5 star SLH hotels. I’ll be writing reviews on those as well.

After Plettenburg Bay, we are heading to the Sanbona Wildlife Reserve for 4 nights before our departure. We booked it with Dolan at Safari.com. I highly recommend them for safari bookings as well. One of the reasons for this recommendation is: We had a flight change that necessitated our needing to extend our 3 night safari stay an additional night. He got back to us and said, they have a special now, stay 3 nights and get the 4th night free. He didn't need to do that as we expected that we would need to pay for the additional night.