Government Avenue | R. Doug Wicker

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December 17, 2025 · 5:35 am

Cape Town — Touring Cape Town on Foot: Company’s Garden and its Most Famous Resident

Government Avenue; Parliament (left), Company’s Garden (right)

The oldest public garden in South Africa is right here — the Company’s Garden on Government Avenue, directly across from the old Parliament building. How old? Try 1652 old. Try Dutch East India Company old. This place is National Heritage Site old, as you might suspect.

Company’s Garden, Government Avenue, Cape Town, South Africa

I’ll get to our walk through the Company’s Garden in a moment, but first I’m going to show you an eating establishment located here in case you get hungry. It’s the appropriately named Company’s Garden Restaurant:

Now, I’m not going to diss this place, because in our search for some local cuisine, I’ve a feeling we may have just ordered the wrong thing. We went with the Cape Malay platter, which included two soups, spring rolls, chicken “pies”, djaltjies (heavy, ball-shaped chili bites from from chickpea flour), fish cakes, condiments (sambal, chutney, raita). We found the food bland, heavy, and not to our particular taste. If we had it to do all over again, and I will next year on our return trip to Cape Town, we would order something else off the menu.

Cape Malay Platter — a bit bland and far too heavy for our tastes

Now for the grand Company’s Garden tour, beginning with Cecil John Rhodes, for whom Rhodesia was named:

Behind Cecil Rhodes, hidden by trees and just outside the garden, you may catch a glimpse of this interesting structure at 62 Queen Victoria Street:

62 Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town, South Africa

Back in the garden, ficus elastica makes an appearance. A member of the fig family, ficus elastica goes by another name — the rubber tree — and the example here is enormous.

There are a lot of memorials within this 373-year-old garden, including one to teetotalers. Behold the memorial to the Temperance Movement:

Before we entered the Company’s Garden, we were advised by a friendly local to be on the lookout for the garden’s most famous resident. He’s cute. He’s small. I’m guessing he’s also caucasian.

Company’s Garden’s most famous resident; an albino squirrel

Слава Україні! (Slava Ukraini!)

Cape Town — Touring Cape Town on Foot: Government Avenue

St. George’s Mall, Cape Town, South Africa

Rested and ready to go after our relaxing wine tour on Day One in Cape Town, Ursula and I headed out on foot the next day (9 March 2025) to explore. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express in Cape Town’s City Centre (CBD—Central Business District, which is nicely situated for several reasons which I shall go into in this series. For instance, on this day we started by exploring a pedestrian shopping street just beyond our hotel’s entrance. Pictured above is that street, St. George’s Mall. All along this tree-lined, brick-paved area you’ll find shops, cafés, and street vendors hawking everything from luggage (which came in handy after our buying spree) to leather goods to clothing.

Traveler Shopping Tip of the Day: Want some great, yet incredibly affordable, clothing? Right next to the Holiday Inn Express is a wonderful clothing store called Mr Price. Technically, this Mr Price is on Adderly Street, but it’s so large that there is a St. George’s Mall entrance as well. We wound up slipping into Mr Price more than once.

We also explored another nearby pedestrian street on which we found dining establishments, bars, and cafés. This is Shortmarket Street between Bree Street, a major throughfare, and St. George’s Mall:

Shortmarket Street, Cape Town, South Africa

Our primary goal on this day was to head on over onto Government Avenue to pass by the Houses of Parliament and into the Company’s Garden. So, we reversed course, hit Adderley Street headed southwest bound, whereby we passed by the historic C. H. Pearne Building from 1903: