What's the must-see thing in Cape Town?

Table Mountain's cable car rotates a full 360 degrees during the five-minute ride, which sounds like a tourist gimmick until you're inside and the wind is buffeting the cabin and you realise you're watching the entire Atlantic seaboard unspool beneath you. The summit is flat — properly flat, not rounded-and-called-flat — and covered in low fynbos scrub that smells sharp and resinous after rain. Walk the Maclear's Beacon trail to the highest point (1,085 metres) if you have an hour; the sandstone underfoot is rough and warm in the mornings. Book the cable car online the night before — walk-up queues run 90 minutes by 10am in high season, and the R400 ticket (about $24 USD at current rates) doesn't include a queue-skip. The southeaster wind shuts the cable car without warning; mornings tend to be calmer. If the webcam at the lower station shows cloud spilling over the top, wait a day.

Robben Island is the toughest recommendation on this list — not because the island itself disappoints, but because the logistics can. The ferry from Nelson Mandela Gateway at the V&A Waterfront takes 30 minutes across Table Bay, and the water is rough enough that half the passengers are green by arrival. Tours run about three and a half hours total. Former political prisoners guide you through the cell blocks, and there's a weight to standing in Mandela's 2-by-2.5-metre cell that no photograph conveys — the concrete floor is cold even in February, the blanket on the bed is thin, and the light through the barred window barely reaches the back wall. Book at least two weeks ahead; slots sell out, and the island closes for weather more often than you'd expect. R500 per adult (roughly $30 USD). Go on a clear morning if you can choose — the return ferry view of Table Mountain from the water is the best angle of it you'll get.

Boulders Beach in Simon's Town, about 40 minutes south of the city centre along the M4, is where a colony of African penguins lives on white sand sheltered by enormous granite boulders. The penguins are small — knee-height — and completely indifferent to humans, which means you'll watch them waddle past your feet on the boardwalk, braying at each other in a sound somewhere between a donkey and a rusty hinge. The water is cold. Atlantic-fed, rarely above 14°C even in summer. Locals swim here anyway. Entry is R176 (about $11 USD) through SANParks, and the afternoon light between 3pm and 5pm tends to catch the boulders and the birds at their best. Mind you, the colony has been declining for years — from over 3,000 breeding pairs in 2004 to fewer than 1,000 now — so this is less a guaranteed-forever attraction and more a window that's still open.

If you only have three days, do Table Mountain on your first clear morning — check the webcam before you commit to the Uber up Tafelberg Road. Save Robben Island for day two (the 9am ferry is the steadiest crossing). Boulders Beach fits into a day-three loop down the Cape Peninsula through Muizenberg, Kalk Bay, and Simon's Town, where you can stop for fish and chips at Kalky's right on the harbour wall — the hake is firm and the chips come in paper, eaten standing up while the smell of diesel and salt water competes for your attention. That said, if the cable car is shut on day one, don't panic. Swap it to day three and do the peninsula first. Cape Town's weather is famously moody — the locals say you get four seasons in one day, and they're not exaggerating.