Waterfront to Church Street
From the Waterfront turn right into Buitengracht Street (M62 Camps Bay). After 1km turn left into Wale Street, then third right into Long Street and park. Head back down Long Street on foot (against the flow of the one-way traffic), cross Wale Street, Church Street is next. The Church Street Antiques Market, billed as Cape Town's original market, is in the pedestrians-only area to your right.
Non-shoppers can enjoy breakfast at one of the pavement tables at Café Mozart, while you wander from stall to stall, each brimming with old china, brilliant brassware, ancient coins, velvet gloves and old jewellery (including rare, and large, Zulu earrings that are inserted into the lobes), bric-a-brac and interesting junk.
The market complements some more highbrow antique shops and galleries that are worth visiting in the same street. Keep going to Burr & Muir, an emporium of art nouveau and art deco. Also pop into African Image, on the corner of Church and Burg streets, for beautiful (and some fun) African artefacts, old and new.
Long Street Dust
Once you've exhausted Church Street, head back up Long Street towards the mountain and look out for the entrance to the Long Street Antique Arcade on your left (if you hit Wale Street you've gone too far). This is a rabbit warren of more than a dozen tiny shops, each well worth a dig.
You'll find beautiful old maps and prints dating back to the 1800s, militaria and medals, scientific and medical curiosities straight from the lab, dusty cameras, clocks, ethnic art and silverware, as well as the more predictable jewellery, china, paintings and porcelain.
The arcade cuts the corner of the city block, so you'll pop out onto the pavement in Wale Street. Turn right then left into Long Street, for a meander up one of the most lively and diverse streets in Cape Town. Here antique and book shops sit sombrely next to backpacker lodges, student pubs, über-trendy fashion boutiques, clubs, pavement restaurants and seriously good cafés.
The street is peopled with a lively babble of tourists, grungy students, Rastas, artists and inevitable bergies, and you'll almost certainly trip over a film crew using Long Street as a historical/trendy/inner city backdrop for a shoot. On your wander up Long Street, look out for Clarke's Bookshop, possibly Cape Town's most important purveyor of rare and out-of-print books on southern Africa (as well as new ones) that tower to the ceiling.
Bristol Antiques is also on this street and a little further on you'll find Atkinson's Antiques for fine jewellery, silverware, watches and objets d'art, as well as Second Time Around, for sequinned vintage and contemporary clothing and costume jewellery you can pick up for a (comparative!) song.
Other Town Digs
If all the antique dust is getting to you, there's also a factory shop full of outdoor gear for hikers, a couple of trendy fashion stores and one or two beautiful gifts/décor shops. Or settle down with a beer at one of the several pubs and pavement cafés that line Long Street. Right at the top of Long Street, past the Long Street Baths and across Buitensingel Road, you'll find another retro haven that's a winner with film crews looking for relics of the 50s and 60s.
Bruce Tait Kitsch and Collectables, with arguably the most pierced man in Cape Town behind the till, bulges with feather boas, plastic fruit lights and all manner of glorious kitsch and collectables. You'll battle to leave without buying something and if you've always wanted a nodding dog for your rear windscreen, here's the store for you to browse on your Cape Town holiday.
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