Colombia

Cartagena’s walled Old City is where to stay. Not the newer part of town, not the beaches outside it. Streets there sell arepas and patacones from food carts, salsa drifts out of the bars, and the whole place has a loose, magic-realist feel that makes sense once you remember this is Gabriel García Márquez country. LM Boutique Hotel sits inside those walls, in a slower, more Caribbean rhythm than the rest of Colombia. Bogotá’s mountain highlands feel like a different country by comparison.

Bogotá splits into distinct zones. La Candelaria holds the old cathedral and the government buildings; Zona Rosa, the “pink zone,” is where people go to eat and go out at night. We stayed at Click Clack Hotel, right in Zona Rosa — a good base for a city that takes a little patience before it shows you why it’s worth the couple of days.