You're making the Cape - and especially Cape Town - your stomping ground this season? Don't miss the following hot spots:
Platinum mile
It took a while, but Louis Vuitton has finally made it to Cape Town. Along with a slew of other fancy-pants labels, the French have colonised the V&A Waterfront's new, high-ceilinged, long galleria in the revamped upstairs bit. 
Not quite the marble flooring you expect, but the glamorous wing has given the country's most-visited tourist spot a long overdue boost, encouraging adjacent stores to up their game. Even Woolies has totally done over its top floor.
All the usual LV suspects, sporting the LV signature, are on the shelves of Louis Vuitton's lavish space, which smells seductively of peaches and has a Japanese assistant to assist the Japanese tourists. For those with venture capital to invest in their wardrobes, I recommend the men's stitched black lace-ups that are reminiscent of cyclist shoes - desperately comfortable and desperately cutting-edge.
Across the way is the always innovative Paul Smith. A shop with an unconventional London vibe, and clothing that's rare and beautifully crafted, never run-of-the-mill, by an unpredictable designer. Tiny, exquisitely cut waistcoats for women, and stunning men's suits with fine satin edging on the lapels. Smith's famous sense of humour extends to Buckingham Palace guards on his men's socks and a cabinet full of mad British toys.
Jimmy Choo, Gucci and Burberry are also about to open here. Max Mara and Byblos are here already, along with a host of upmarket stores that include Ed Hardy, Madonna's favourite glam rock and grunge label, and SA's own colourfully exotic Lulu TanTan - opulent fashion with a Shanghai feel.
Tokyo Sexwale has a stake here, too. He's a financial backer, along with Chris Greig, of Christoff, the elegant new jewellery shop of Anne Tripp, wife of Everard Read's David, which sports enough dazzling tanzanite to rival the Atlantic outside.
Down on the farm
One of the other compelling reasons to visit the pleasantly rural Noordhoek Farm Village - besides the sublime food produced by Franck Dangereux's well-trained team at the Foodbarn - is the fact that it's on a village green. So while you're working your way happily through Dangereux's sensational, and reasonably priced, three-course tasting menu, you can be monitoring your children from the stoep as they fall off the jungle gym.
And if you're allergic to children, or to the wind, Dangereux has added an extension upstairs under the thatch, where you can savour your prawns tempura on a brinjal, tomato and couscous tian served with basil sauce - or whatever - in a totally adult environment.
You have to book, but if you can't get in, Café Roux on the other side of this pretty whitewashed complex of craft and deli shops is a happy alternative.
Thank you, Cecil
Cecil John Rhodes did some silly imperialistic things, but the acquisition of 528 precious hectares of fynbos on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain is not one of them. He created Kirstenbosch, Africa's most impressive botanical garden. And it comes as no surprise that Time magazine last month devoted part of its "Global Adviser" section to Kirstenbosch's Sunday Sunset Concerts.
Describing the venue as "the world's most pastoral arena", glorying in an atmosphere that is "appropriately Elysian", the magazine also raves about the music, calling the mix of musicians "as eclectic as the country they live in".
Of course, for Capetonians these concerts have always been one of the highlights of summer, as much of an institution as the open-air Shakespeare at Maynardville. Tickets go on sale two days before, and on the day people start arriving well before the start at 5.30 pm, with their rugs, bottles of sauvignon blanc and Nigella Lawson picnics.
Dick's art attack
If all the singers, drummers and other musicians who take part in Moyo's nightly African circus under the stars at Spier aren't enough to lure you to Dick Enthoven's unique winelands development on a 300-year-old farm, then perhaps his newest venture will.
Spier Contemporary is the monumental art competition that was launched this year, filling the gap left by the now defunct Brett Kebble Art Awards, with the same curator, Clive van den Berg. It features 100 works selected from over 2 000 entries, and though it has no particular theme, the range of those participating covers the country and reveals the fascinating dynamics of who we are as a nation now.
Some former Brett Kebble winners are here, including Doreen Southwood, who won with her Diving Board sculpture, and Limpopo sculptor Phillip Rikhotso, who was a joint winner, with 13 carved wooden figures.
Among the better known are Gavin Younge, the UCT lecturer who did the Ice Cream Cone in the V&A Waterfront, Philip Miller - the composer who does music for William Kentridge - and Sue Williamson, whose literary and cultural achievements in the art world are legendary. Other iconoclasts are Brett Murray, who's done a canine satire of urban lifestyles, and the outrageous Peet Pienaar, whose leather sneaker artworks are a comment on globalisation.
It's a compelling show guaranteed to provoke contention, and imaginatively displayed in a cluster of giant containers on the south bank of the river that runs through Spier. It ends in March.
Meanwhile, in Spier's wine cellar the work of the country's recognised craft icons is on show in the Cape Craft & Design Institute's Iconic exhibition until January 20. Internationally celebrated icons are here, for example Carrol Boyes, Clementina van der Walt and Barbara Jackson, busy co-operatives like Monkeybiz, Streetwires and Mielie, and designers like Haldane Martin, whose Zulu Mama chair got onto Maison Objet in Paris, and Heath Nash, whose recycled Flowerball lights have sold in The Conran Shop.
Gangland goes organic
Ever since developers turned the derelict old Pyotts Biscuit Mill in Albert Road, Woodstock, into a Saturday organic market - Neighbourhood Goods Market - the BMWs haven't stopped arriving in droves. So successful has this venture been that it's just doubled in size, and opened on Sundays as well.
Neighbourhood Goods Market - Don't miss the arts andcrafts shops next door
Be aware that it's in a stretch of bitten-down turf Capetonians used to avoid, its mean streets once home to the infamous Staggie gangsters. So get here by 9 am. Otherwise you might find yourself parking on a back street plot where some jovial soul who's a drug lord on weekdays is making a weekend killing. Financially, I mean.
Since Capetonians are hippies at heart, even when they work for Old Mutual, you'll find them having breakfast at long communal trestle tables made out of old doors and decorated with jugs of roses. They'll be eating vegetarian rotis, or Silwood Kitchen's pear tarts, or pork pies made by Chef of the Year George Jardine, bought at the Kitchen Cowboys stall.
And some will be having serious gourmet picnics. Freshly shucked oysters from Mother Shuckers. Terrine flown in from France. Chorizo, smoked impala and truffle saucisson from Bread & Wine's celebrated self-taught charcutier Neil Jewell in the Franschhoek valley.
When you've eaten, and stocked up with bags full of shiitake mushroom bread, pesticide-free artichokes and ethically raised pork, don't miss the arts, crafts and décor shops next door, located in and around the old red gabled building.
Visit 3rd World Interiors for affordable Indian and African furniture, Heartworks for its enormous range of lovely handcrafted pieces, including its famous embroidered teddy bears, Decadence for its spectacularly camp lampshades that look like garden party hats, and a giant bead emporium that's worth a visit just for the joy of all that brilliant colour.
Supernova of the art galaxy
Cape Town art lovers are flocking to see a major retrospective of the controversial work of Marlene Dumas, the SA-born, Amsterdam-based painter who bears what The New York Times calls "the odd distinction of commanding the highest price for a living female artist at auction". A stunning US$3,34m was what her 1987 painting The Teacher fetched at Christie's in 2005.
Dumas' occasionally shocking depictions of the human face and figure are so sought after, and fetch such high prices, that this graduate of UCT's Michaelis School of Art, born in Kuils River, is apparently in the enviable situation of being able to be picky about whom she allows to buy them. You might not get one if she doesn't like your politics.
Dumas left SA in 1976 to do a post-graduate degree in Haarlem and has since had solo exhibitions at the Tate, the Centre Pompidou and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. Now the land of her birth is seeing her first solo exhibition here, at Iziko National Gallery in the Company Gardens until January 13, when it moves to Gauteng.
They're off!
No promises, but as an elegant lead-up to the J&B Met next year on January 26, L'Ormarins Queen's Plate at Kenilworth racetrack on December 29 could be fun. Whether you're in one of the designer-decorated hospitality marquees, or enjoying a gourmet picnic lunch on the lawn, you should be stylishly kitted out in white with a touch of blue - this year's dress code. Pleasurable nostalgia thrown in too, in a display of vintage cars all the way from Franschhoek.
Grape escape
No contest. As everything goes bananas under the mountain, you can be sure it will be more peaceful out there in the rolling winelands, where three estates have acquired themselves wildly inventive young culinary lions.
A team headed by celebrated winelands chef Matthew Gordon has taken over the kitchens at Cotage Fromage, the radically revamped landmark thatched cottage at the entrance to Vrede en Lust outside Franschhoek.
Along with big, clever extensions that include a wraparound wind-protected stoep, the restaurant now has a bakery run by baker extraordinaire Jean-Pierre Smith, and a deli stocked with local and speciality cheeses, olives and cured meats that will also supply the restaurant. (See "Dial 'em up" for contact details.)
On the other side of the mountain, on Dornier wine estate outside Stellenbosch, there's a new refreshingly funky restaurant in the barn that was once La Masseria; it's called Bodega. It has uplifting, colourful New-World décor - striking glass chandeliers and kikuyu wall hangings - and equally delicious food created by chef Tullishe le Roux, who's done time in some high-profile London kitchens. Her Flammkuchen with nougat and chocolate is heaven. So is the estate's affordable wine list.
Closer to town, Cassia, an urban chic restaurant in the rural setting of the picturesque Nitida wine estate in Durbanville, has been opened by Pete Goffe-Wood and David Grier, that crazy cook who was the first to run around the Wall of China. It's a lovely, serene space with interior design by Francois du Plessis, and cuisine by Dan Evans, formerly of the Michelin-starred Odette's in London.
Virgin Territory
Tucked away in Wembley Square is a shop that sounds more like a building society than the home of SA's top swimwear designer. JBS is the concept store of Julia Broadhurst. who designs under private labels for British fashion darlings Jasper Conran and Sadie Frost, and global trendsetters Zara and Oysho. Her bandeau bikinis, cutaway one-pieces, monokinis and so on are sensational. You'll want two of each.
Wembley Square is one of the city's best-kept secrets. Those who know it love this landmark leisure and residential development in McKenzie Street in Gardens, where the chicks and jocks sweat it out upstairs in Virgin Active's health club, while the rest of us tuck into our carbs at the restaurants below, or stock up on carbs at Knead bakery - San Francisco sourdough or olive and rosemary sticks especially.
Cape Talk this month voted Knead's pies the best in the country. Meanwhile the bakery is in the process of opening a hot deli next door called Eat. It's mainly Italian. Should they have called it Mangiamo?
Walking the ghosts
Until Taliep Petersen's murder made headlines in December last year, not that many South Africans knew the full extent of what he and David Kramer had achieved during their 20-year partnership, overriding the colour bar to retell SA's suppressed history and to mine the SA cultural experience for musical gems.
The late Taliep Petersen with David Kramer - A tribute
Four of the six musicals they wrote were acclaimed globally. One set an SA benchmark. Kat and the Kings - the story of Kat Diamond and The Cavalla Kings, a doo-wop vocal harmony group - charmed the world. It played to packed houses from Vegas to Berlin and became the only SA musical to do both Broadway and the West End and win the Laurence Olivier award for best new musical in London.The Kramer Petersen Songbook at the Baxter this month is Kramer's way of celebrating Petersen's life and their inspirational partnership. It contains about 38 of the best songs from the musicals, but it's not a concert. It's what Kramer calls "a songbook show", presenting a body of work through the eyes of those who produced it.
This one has all the nostalgia of the past, plus the vibrancy of the present - the same passion, heat and heartfelt songs of the Bo-Kaap, the Carnival, and those places and events that were Petersen's life. It's at the Baxter from December 7 to January 5, including a performance on New Year's Eve, and it won't go to Gauteng. Kramer says he's doesn't want to treat it like another show. It's a tribute to Taliep Petersen, and that's it. Closure.
Quote: As everything goes bananas under the mountain, you can be sure it will be more peaceful out there in the rolling winelandsFancy-pants labels Bring platinum cards for Platinunum Mile'
Capetonians are hippies at heart Stocking up on fine food - and other finds - at Neighbourhood Goods MarketNeighbourhood Goods Market Don't miss the arts and crafts shops next door
Spier Contemporary Art for Africa
Cassia Urban chic in a rural settingThe late Taliep Petersen with David Kramer A tribute
Ranking the Analysts 2009
Cotage Fromage: Tel: (021) 874-3911
