Cape Town or Kigali?

On beaches the gap between the two is about as wide as it gets. Cape Town has two coastlines. On the Atlantic side are the white-sand coves of Clifton and Camps Bay below the Twelve Apostles, where the cold water makes swimming a quick plunge. On the other side is False Bay, where Muizenberg, St James and Boulders warm up enough in summer for proper swims, with penguins on the sand.

Kigali is landlocked, and a swim in town means a hotel pool. Lake Muhazi, an hour away, is a place for lunch and a boat trip rather than a day on the sand. The real lake beaches, at Rubavu on Lake Kivu, are a three-hour drive and best done as an overnight trip.

Cape Town gives a food lover far more to work with. There are Cape Malay curries and bobotie from the Bo-Kaap, line fish at the harbours of Kalk Bay and Hout Bay, and ambitious tasting menus on Bree Street and in Woodstock. Wine estates less than an hour away fill the wine lists.

Kigali eats simply: lunchtime buffets of beans, plantain and isombe, and evenings of goat brochettes and cold beer in open-air bars. Its strong point is highland coffee, brewed with care in Kiyovu and Kacyiru. The international community also supports good Ethiopian and Indian cooking, but there is little fine dining.

The main sights of both cities deal with painful recent history, but Cape Town has more to see and more layers to it. Robben Island, the District Six Museum and the Castle of Good Hope cover both apartheid and the Dutch colonial era. With the museums around the Company's Garden, the Bo-Kaap and Zeitz MOCAA, there is enough for three or four days.

In Kigali, the Genocide Memorial at Gisozi is essential and does more than anything else to explain the country. The Campaign Against Genocide Museum and Kandt House add to it. Beyond these and the contemporary galleries in Kacyiru and Kimihurura, the young capital has no old town, and two or three days are enough.

Cape Town has more nights out and more variety. You can choose between Long Street's backpacker bars, the cocktail and wine bars of Bree and Kloof Streets and the gay quarter of De Waterkant. In summer there are sundowners at Camps Bay, with clubs to follow at the weekend. Outside December to March it is calmer, and after dark you get between areas by car.

Kigali's scene is smaller and more orderly. Evenings revolve around brochettes and beer, rooftop lounges looking over the lit hills and weekend clubs in Kimihurura and Nyarutarama playing Afrobeats and Congolese rumba. Weeknights are quiet.

For nature, Cape Town is in a different league. Table Mountain rises behind the centre and Lion's Head makes a good sunrise climb. The national park runs through fynbos found nowhere else on its way to Cape Point, and penguins, seals and, from June to November, whales are all close by. On top of that there are surf lessons at Muizenberg, kitesurfing and Chapman's Peak Drive.

The green around Kigali is gentler: a hike up Mount Kigali, the boardwalks of Nyandungu wetland and cycling on the rolling roads out of town. Its big draws, Akagera's savannah and the gorilla volcanoes, are about two and a half hours away. There, the wild is a separate expedition rather than part of a day in the city.

The Winelands give Cape Town several days of easy outings. There are the oak-lined streets of Stellenbosch, Franschhoek in its mountain valley and hundreds of estates around Paarl and Constantia. Further east, Hermanus offers whale watching from the clifftops. Nearly all of these need a car or a tour.

From Kigali, the essential outing is a sombre one rather than a leisurely one: the memorial churches at Nyamata and Ntarama, about an hour south. The King's Palace at Nyanza is further on. After that, Huye and Lake Kivu are really overnight trips.

With children, the choice is between a city full of things to do and a city that is simply easy to be in, and Cape Town's list of things to do is far longer. The Two Oceans Aquarium at the Waterfront, the penguins at Boulders, the cableway up Table Mountain and the treetop walkway at Kirstenbosch can fill several days. In summer the tidal pools at St James and Fish Hoek are warm enough for small swimmers. The cost is logistics: the sights are spread out, so a car is almost essential, and you need the street awareness a South African city calls for.

Kigali is clean and orderly, feels safe, stays mild all year, and Rwandans are warm towards children. But it has no zoo, aquarium or anything else built for children, and the Genocide Memorial is not suitable for young ones. Afternoons come down to hotel pools and the Nyandungu wetland. For older children who can manage the long drive, an Akagera safari is the highlight.

Neither city works well on foot or by public transport, so the difference lies in how you fill the gaps. In Cape Town you can walk around the City Bowl, the Bo-Kaap and the Waterfront by day, and MyCiTi buses reach the airport and the Atlantic beaches. Everything else means driving on the left, ride-hailing or a tour, with a car door to door after dark.

In Kigali, steep ridges put deep valleys between neighbourhoods that look close on the map. The centre is safe and clean to walk around, but most visitors use licensed moto-taxis, whose drivers carry a spare helmet, or booked cars. Traffic is light, so journeys are short.

Shopping in Cape Town is about South African design and wine. In Kigali it comes down almost entirely to handmade crafts, and the Cape city gives you far more to browse. The V&A Waterfront brings chains, local labels and a makers' hall under one roof. Woodstock's warehouses and Bree and Kloof Streets sell ceramics, leather and clothes by local designers, and Greenmarket Square has crafts from across the continent. Wine and rooibos are the natural things to take home.

Kigali's range is narrow, but what it has is its own: lidded agaseke baskets, imigongo panels and kitenge cloth at Kimironko market, where tailors will make the cloth into clothes within days. A few Rwandan designers and bags of highland coffee complete the list, and the malls serve residents rather than visitors.

Both cities are easy on a visitor's budget, but in Cape Town money goes further on the things travellers actually spend it on. Tasting menus, estate wine, car hire and fuel all cost little. The main strain is rooms in Camps Bay and Clifton during the December to January peak.

Kigali is only cheap if you live like a local, on buffet lunches, brochettes and moto-taxis. International hotels and imported wine are priced for diplomats. Once you leave the city, park fees and gorilla permits can take up most of a budget.

Cape Town has a musical identity of its own in Cape jazz. It holds a major annual jazz festival and summer sunset concerts on the lawns of Kirstenbosch. Artscape, the Baxter Theatre and the Cape Philharmonic cover opera, drama and orchestral evenings.

Kigali's standout is intore dance, with warriors in grass headdresses leaping to drums, and it is worth catching when a show is on. Otherwise it relies on festivals, arena concerts and small open-mic nights. There is no opera house, no orchestra and no regular theatre season.

Neither city has a bathing tradition, so rest comes from the setting rather than from treatments. Cape Town gives you more ways to slow down: long lunches on wine estates, yoga in the Atlantic seaboard suburbs, morning swims in the tidal pools of False Bay and good-value spas in the Winelands.

Kigali's calm lies in its character: quiet, orderly streets, garden hotels and coffee on a terrace in mild highland air. It works as a pause between trips into the country rather than a reason to come.