Sofitel Legend Santa Clara Cartagena

Sofitel Legend Santa Clara Cartagena is a converted seventeenth-century convent, a grand and historic hotel, easily the top lodging in the Caribbean coast city of Cartagena — which is, in turn, the destination of choice for travelers from elsewhere in Colombia; the young and the beautiful congregate here for a respite from the troubles in Bogota, Cali, Medellin.

For the same reason—the relative calm—Cartagena is especially popular among Canadian and European visitors (Americans are rather more scarce, due to political concerns), and Santa Clara is the first choice for many tourists, who are drawn by its architectural charms as well as its top-notch service. Facilities are up to the standard of any of the world's best hotels, from the business center to the swimming pool and Turkish bath, and its more idiosyncratic charms include daily trips to its sister hotel's private island (some 45 minutes away) offering coral reef scuba courses and other seaside diversions.

Though on the Caribbean Sea, there is something decidedly European about this hotel. The cuisine is French and Italian, and the atmosphere is elegant, Continental (this being a Sofitel, after all). And though a resort town Cartagena remains unspoiled by the sort of gratuitous development that mars much of the Caribbean. This is the place to see a sort of time-machine Colombia, a Colombia that might have been, had history played out differently. Not your everyday hotel experience, by any means.

How to get there:
Sofitel Legend Santa Clara Cartagena is about a 20-minute drive from Cartagena’s Rafael Núñez International Airport (CTG).