If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (ZAR17,105.26), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
A cotton candy-coloured façade isn’t the only sweet ingredient at Mount Nelson, a Belmond Hotel, where the humble afternoon tea – complete with resident tea sommelier and Thiebaud-esque cake buffet – has been raised to the level of high art. For over a century now, guests have been left hopelessly devoted to this pink lady of Cape Town, thanks to its captivating mix of Barbiecore exteriors and old-school elegance – chandeliers, sweeping staircases, checkerboard floors, and Venetian mirrors. Modern-day fashionistas sip Moët in private poolside cabanas, groove at the Sunday jazz brunch, and go full A-list mode on classic car tours of the Cape Winelands.
Smith Extra
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$100 credit towards food and drink at the hotel (excluding the Red Room)
11am. Check-in is at 3pm. Late check-out and early check-in can be arranged when availability permits, or guaranteed for a fee. You can store luggage and make use of the hotel’s many facilities while you wait for your room.
Prices
Double rooms from £832.37 (ZAR19,500), including tax at 14 per cent.
More details
Rates include a full buffet and à la carte breakfast at the poolside Oasis restaurant.
Also
The hotel has a number of fully accessible rooms.
At the hotel
WiFi throughout, 24-hour gym, tennis courts, free city shuttle, and a boutique. In rooms: air-conditioning, LCD TV, minibar, tea- and coffee-making kit, free bottled water, and Charlotte Rhys bath products.
Our favourite rooms
Cloistered in the hotel’s perfectly manicured gardens and complete with pretty picket fences, deluxe garden cottages share the same pink blush as the hotel proper and are set in restored historic Cape homes. Inside, decorative fabrics, contemporary art prints and Venetian mirrors set the scene, and there’s a fireplace in the lounge for cosy evenings in. The delicate scent of roses – including the hotel’s own (you guessed it) signature pink bloom – drifts in through patio doors which open onto a garden-facing terrace.
Poolside
There are two pools at Mount Nelson, both open 24 hours and staffed 9am-7pm daily. The main Oasis pool is set in manicured gardens against the pastel-pink backdrop of the hotel. The smaller, adults-only Cottage pool is squirrelled away in peaceful, palm-shaded seclusion at the rear of the hotel.
Spa
Housed inside a trio of restored Victorian heritage homes, Librisa Spa is where it's at for modern botanical therapies starring the hotel’s signature rose petal and geranium massage oils and African dance-inspired treatments. There’s a steam room, Finnish sauna, plunge pool and foliage-festooned conservatory with herbal tea selection, to boot.
Packing tips
The Mount Nelson is the kind of place that invites quiet afternoons curled up in a snug with a good book. Get fully immersed in the old-school colonial aesthetic with a classic Agatha Christie murder-mystery, embrace the flamboyance with celebrated Liberace biography Behind the Candelabra, or gen up on South Africa’s turbulent history with Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom. All three are former guests of the hotel.
Also
Sort out that wonky serve of yours with resident pro tennis coach Barkie McKrea, who teaches all levels on the hotel’s two courts. There’s a 24-hour gym, and hardcore fitness fanatics can up the ante with HIIT and cardio boxing at free morning boot camps.
Pet‐friendly
In the unlikely event their designer bed, dog bowl and treats don’t set your pooch’s tail wagging, the promise of epic walkies on Cape Town’s mountain trails surely will. A nightly fee of SAR 1,045 covers up to two pets in a room. See more pet-friendly hotels in Cape Town.
Children
Little Smiths are in clover at the free weekend kids’ club, which runs 10am–5pm on Saturday and Sunday and daily until 6pm through the festive period, and includes activities like sand art, baking and mosaic-making.
Best for
The kids’ club caters for ages four to 12.
Recommended rooms
Most rooms and suites have connecting options and extra beds can be added in Deluxe Rooms, Junior Suites and Studio Suites.
Activities
There’s a free kids’ club for four- to 12-year-olds at the Mount Nelson, a Belmond Hotel, which runs 10am–5pm on Saturdays and Sundays, and daily until 6pm through the festive period. Activities include sand art, baking, mosaic-making, storytelling sessions and group games. Older kids can play hide-and-seek in nine acres of grounds, cool off in the Oasis pool, and take tennis lessons with the resident coach.
Swimming pool
Kids are welcome to use the Oasis pool, which is staffed from 9am–7pm.
Our vote goes to whichever table lies closest to the eye-popping (and belt-loosening) cake buffet at afternoon tea in the Lounge.
Dress Code
A hotel as classic as the Mount Nelson warrants all the movie-star glamour you can channel: tea dresses, soft-hued tailoring or neutral linens all meet the brief.
Hotel restaurant
Parquet floors, painted murals, potted palms and glass chandeliers set the scene at main restaurant Oasis, which serves up modern Cape cuisine as well as providing the atmospheric setting for Mount Nelson’s toe-tapping Sunday jazz brunches. There’s an ever-changing seasonal line-up at the Verandah and you can share steaming plates of Asian favourites – dim sum, venison tataki, pork ribs and karaage cauliflower – in the intimate subterranean Red Room. But you came here for the afternoon tea, right? In which case, make straight for the Lounge, a colonial daydream of checkerboard floors, potted palms, fine bone china, and a tea-and-cake menu that runs to some 30 pages.
Hotel bar
A smart and intimate snug for well-heeled Capetonians, Planet Bar is open daily from noon, serving wines from the Cape estates and signature cocktails including the rose syrup-infused Pink Lady and zesty, vodka-laced Palm Avenue.
Last orders
Dinner is served until 11pm at Oasis, with last orders taken at 9.30pm. Breakfast on hot dishes including eggs benedict and kippers between 6.30am and 10.30am.
Room service
24-hour room service means you need never worry about when you can order that next smashed wagyu burger.
Mount Nelson, a Belmond Hotel – a blushing pink vision of colonial Georgian grandeur – is set at the foot of Table Mountain, a short hop from exclusive Kloof Street.
Planes
Cape Town International Airport is a half-hour drive from the hotel, around ZAR250 in a cab. Private transfers can be arranged via the hotel from ZAR1,145 for up to three passengers, including luggage.
Trains
Cape Town Station is a little under two kilometres away and the hotel’s courtesy shuttle can be summoned for transfers between the hours of 8am and 8pm.
Automobiles
Sure, the courtesy bus is handy for trips within a 10 kilometre radius, but you’ll likely want your own set of wheels to strike out for beautiful Bloubergstrand beaches or the Cape Winelands. Cars are available to rent at the airport and there’s free secure valet parking at the hotel.
Worth getting out of bed for
Much like the Nellie itself, there’s nothing ordinary about the hotel’s quirky catalogue of sightseeing tours. Sure, you could tour the Cape Winelands solo in a rented Renault. Or you let a designated driver chauffeur you from Constantia Valley vineyard tasting session to sumptuous Stellenbosch estate in one of the hotel’s fleet of classic cars. Or don helmet, goggles and leathers and hop aboard a vintage pink Mount Nelson sidecar for customisable guided tours to Cape Town, the Bloubergstrand beaches and beyond.
You’ll spend plenty of time gazing at Table Mountain – from the hotel pool and gardens, and maybe even from your room – but scaling it brings (worthwhile) fresh perspective. Guided walks of its scrubby lower slopes at sunrise and sunset make the best of Cape Town’s magical light and come with breakfast boxes and sundowners respectively. Snorkel with sharks in the Cape’s kelp forests on excursions led by the resident marine biologist, or go whale-watching from a frankly much safer distance: aboard a Silvercross Airbus helicopter.
And, if the hotel's art collection and guided tour of Cape Town’s coolest architecture have whet your appetite, you’ll find plenty more eye candy in the hip galleries, exclusive fashion boutiques and cool coffee shops that line nearby Kloof Street.
Local restaurants
There’s barely time to work up an appetite on the short stroll from Mount Nelson, a Belmond Hotel, to Kloof Street, home to some of the city’s best restaurants. Capetonians swear by Kloof Street House, a characterful old-school brasserie set inside an old Victorian house complete with an intimate fairylit garden. Or brace those hamstrings for the steep ascent to ëlgr, a little further up the hill, to be rewarded with quirky Nordic-South African cuisine: burnt butter-and-bread caramel ice cream for the win.
Local cafés
Imagine gorging on sourdough avocado toast and mimosas inside your eccentric uncle’s greenhouse and you’ll be halfway to understanding what former nursery and antique store-turned-Kloof Street brunch spot Our Local is about. Or try nearby Manna Epicure for breakfast banana splits, eggs and smoked salmon with coconut bread, baked green eggs and other such inventive treats.
Local bars
Just off Kloof Street on Kloof Nek Road, the achingly hip Publik is a trove of unusual wines from lesser-known indie artisan producers. Just next door, The Power & The Glory serves up some of the best coffee in town by day before morphing into a rocking, beer-swilling hotspot by night.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this blushing grand dame at the foot of Table Mountain and unpacked (and uncorked) their bounty of fruity Cape wines, a full account of their A-list experience will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside the legendary Mount Nelson, a Belmond Hotel, in Cape Town…
The Nellie requires little introduction; its pastel pink colonial exterior is almost as iconic as the flat-topped mountain it overlooks. There’s a deep well of history at Mount Nelson, a Belmond Hotel – the grounds feature an avenue of Canary palms planted in honour of a visit from the future King Edward VIII, and others go back further still. The gnarled wild olive tree is 200 years old, and an ancient oak planted by Dutch aristocrat Willem F van Reede van Oudtshoornat dates to the end of the 18th century. Further heritage features abound – maritime memorabilia from the Union-Castle Line era; fine bone china and silverware at afternoon tea; the unmistakable blush of that Georgian façade. Heck, you can even put quill to paper at an original 1899 desk in the palatial Presidential Suite. But modernised rooms, a collection of contemporary South African art, and 21st-century pursuits like eco marine tours and boot camps add a dash of progressive pink pizzazz to proceedings, paving the way to an equally rosy future.
