Sunnyside, Pretoria

One of the major advantages to a stay in Sunnyside is its accessibility to town and Arcadia. Staying here means you can literally walk to the centre of the city and neighbouring suburbs. Whilst it may be something of a trek – roughly thirty minutes or so to the State Theatre – the walk, sometimes beneath the city's famed Jacarandas, is both interesting and flat, making it relatively easy.

Sunnyside, much like other older and more central suburbs of Pretoria, is laid out in an easy to navigate grid, its streets lined mostly with blocks of flats that date back to the fifties and sixties, most of them still comforting red brick, large balconied, multi-storey blocks. There are, of course, the towering blocks too, like the one that continues to remain above Sunnypark, the shopping centre that functions as the fulcrum of the suburb and has done since the 1970s, despite recently undergoing an overhaul to the tune of R300 million.

Sunnyside remains popular with students because of the myriad flats. If you stay in the northerly reaches of the suburb, you can walk to the University of Pretoria campus, and UNISA's Muckleneuk campus – easy to reach, if you don't mind a slight incline.

The night life of Hatfield, with its restaurants, clubs and bars, is close to Sunnyside, whilst a good few of the tourist attractions – the Voortrekker Monument, the Pretoria Zoo and the Union Buildings, designed by Herbert Baker and well worth a visit – are also easily accessible, if not by foot, then a few minutes by car.

The Gautrain now has a station in Hatfield, minutes away from Sunnyside and close to Loftus Versfeld. Also visit the Klaus Wasserthal art gallery in Celliers Street.