Casa Pestagua

The hotel is set inside a restored 18th-century palace, within the Cartagena's ancient walls. The restaurant is in a courtyard, overlooked by gorgeous colonial-style balconies and towering trees. The turquoise-tiled pool is just as photogenic, shaded by palm trees and home to a cacophony of birds, and there's also a spa and gym (the latter somewhere we were not planning on frequenting). After getting our bearings, Miss Smith and I settled in for a late lunch of steak tartare and caesar wraps while our room was being prepared.  

Taking sanctuary was a theme of our stay at Casa Pestagua — from illness, humidity and chaotic streets — and our temple-like room abetted this. It was a lair of complete calm, with whitewashed stone walls, a huge bed, plush bedding, contemporary photography and a bathroom the size of our London flat. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon lazing by the pool, reading our books with a cold cola in hand, before enjoying the complimentary cocktail hour in the sumptuous bar and venturing out into Cartagena’s old town. Feeling like we were in a movie set, we wandered down wide cobbled streets to the soundtrack of local musicians and the sight of the sunset. We briefly left the old town in order to explore Getsemaní, a buzzy neighbourhood full of tourist bars and street art, before we stumbled upon a small Italian restaurant, filled with locals, for dinner.  

At breakfast the next morning, one of the very kind waiters noticed I was still a bit sickly. He disappeared and then reappeared bearing a teapot and individual measures of honey, ginger and lemon, placing me under strict instructions to make my own concoctions to scare the flu away. We took refuge poolside afterwards, ignoring the humidity as we drifted miles away from the heaving old town, which was just on the other side of the wall.

Desperate to feel the sun on our skin after a wet winter, we spent hours reading books on the comfortable sunloungers, only leaving to treat ourselves to an ice-cream. By late afternoon, we were rested enough to head out to explore the extraordinary fort city of Cartagena further, wandering around with very little planned and zero expectations. Across two afternoons, we fell into bars and coffee shops, stuffed ourselves silly with fresh seafood and searched (alas to no avail) for sloths in the Parque del Centenario. We spent our second evening sitting outside at the acclaimed El Barón bar, watching as an Indian wedding party took over the road with their dancing — the reds and oranges of their beautiful outfits blending in perfectly, as though it was planned, with a stunning sunset. 

On our last afternoon, we snuck out for one last ice-cream before reluctantly checking out. Before heading to Isla Barú, a peninsula two hours south of the city, we were spending one final night in Cartagena, at a rental around the corner from the hotel. We were about to leave with our bags, planning to walk to our next stop, but naturally, Casa Pestagua wasn't going to let our standards drop that quickly. Germán, one of the lovely stewards, insisted on wheeling our bags for us, dodging vintage cars and hordes of tourists, and firmly cementing Miss Smith and I as Casa Pestagua fans for life.