Cape Town
South Africa


The Experience

This glorious British colonial home with salmon-pink walls, wide verandas and lush lawns on a high bluff overlooking the Atlantic was built for cruise-shipping tycoon Sir John Ellerman in the early 1900s. It's now Cape Town's most treasured boutique hotel, an all-inclusive property with 11 individually designed rooms decorated with vintage and original Cape furniture and an extensive collection of South African art. In 2005, an angular Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired villa opened on the grounds, adding a Hollywood-esque glamour, but without even a reception area, the overall feeling is one of a laid-back private home. It's a short walk to the beaches of Clifton and a 10-minute drive with the in-house car service to central Cape Town, but feel free to just wander the grounds in your dressing gown.

The Rooms

All but one room have ocean views, but each of them is designed and laid out differently, as befits a private home. Elegant cream, white, beige and blue tones dominate, as in Room 1, Lady Esther Ellerman's former bedroom, sprawling at 581square feet, with a wrap-round balcony offering views of Table Mountain and contemporary touches such as satellite TV, Internet connections and heated towel rails. The loftlike Room 7, the Ellerman Suite, has a 516-square-feet bedroom/bathroom area, with a large separate dining and living room space, and immense Atlantic views from its balcony. Villa rooms are much more clean-lined and contemporary, with etched infinity mirrors, Travertine marble baths and sweeping panoramas through high windows.

The Service

Staff manage to be on hand when you need them but discreet the rest of the time, much like the hired help in a country house. Which is not to say service is impersonal: One of three on-site managers is there to meet every guest on arrival, and they have an instinctive flair for judging their guests' interests, be it the city's restaurant and style-bar scene or trips to the Winelands. Housekeeping is mostly under the radar, ensuring the help-yourself pantry downstairs is well-stocked with cookies, cake, cheese and ham. Best of all (wine, champagne and spa treatments apart), everything is prepaid, so there's no fussing about checks or tips.

The Highlights

Since this is boutique hotel as private home, the chef not only asks you what you want for dinner but will take you to the nearby fish market in Hout Bay to help you source it, and then invite you into the open-plan kitchen to help cook it, too. The alfresco terrace is the perfect dining setting, its ocean views reminiscent of the French Riviera, with the main swimming pool below. If you want more seclusion, the ground-floor spa (alongside the Villa, the most contemporary part of the property) has its own infinity pool and a separate ice plunge bath on a wide teak deck, where therapists offer various hot-stone treatments and the dreamy sea views are as much part of the treatment as the massages.

-- Douglas Rogers

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