Big Sur, Big Birthday

Edge of the world (Garrapata State Park)

Cartagena

Cartagena is one of the most romantic cities I’ve ever experienced.

It was founded in the 16th century and looks like a quintessential colonial town. Part of the city is preserved within stone walls built by the Spanish (to protect against pirates!) and that is the part you must visit. There are many little parks and plazas, and the buildings are all brightly colored and have bougainvillea on their balconies. You can’t help but want to take pictures everywhere.

The food is amazing. You can find cheap eats and extravagant meals, and you can’t really go wrong. We had good value/affordable meals at places like El Bistro, and went all out at places like La Vitrola and Club de Pesca. We lucked out and wandered into Club de Pesca without a reservation, then got the best table in the place. With La Vitrola, our hotel set up our reservation, and that is when I was so grateful to be in a luxury hotel with the right relationships.

For live music, we of course went to Cafe Havana, but the locals really gave us props for going to Bazurto Social Club. There are small cover prices at the clubs, but they’re much less than you would pay in NY for great music. Both clubs are well worth the trip outside the old city walls.

I’ve stayed in a few hotels in Cartagena, and the top one for me is the Hotel Charleston Santa Teresa (I wrote about it previously). But Arsenal Hotel Boutique is a close second and it’s just outside the old city walls.

So that’s Cartagena in a nutshell. If you get the chance to go, take it. You won’t regret it.

Travel Planning = My Happy Place

Here’s how I’ve been planning my trip to Colombia (similar to how I plan any major trip):

Airfare - We settled on our (approximate) dates for travel and bought our plane tickets to/from the US/Colombia about four months in advance. I say approximate because we had flexibility of 1 or 2 days on either side. The best site I’ve used to look for airfare is http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ which is owned by Google.

Domestic Flights: I later used the ITA Software to also look up the domestic flights I wanted to take within Colombia, but found they didn’t use the same conversion rate as the actual airlines used. The difference wasn’t significant, but remember to check the final price when you buy the ticket.

Hotels - I mainly used Tripadvisor to check reviews and then Booking.com to make the reservations. I’ve used Agoda too, but for Colombia, Booking.com had the lowest rates (as shown on Tripadvisor). Also, Agoda doesn’t always send the confirmation voucher to your email, rather makes you sign into your account on their own site to pull it up. All the reservations were just that; they don’t charge your credit card right away.

Organization - Finally, I sent all the confirmation emails for flights and hotels to Tripit and they were automatically put into an itinerary for me. I will probably carry paper copies of these as well, but it’s nice to have the itinerary up on “the cloud” if necessary.

Insurance - If you’re spending a ton of money on travel, it’s probably a good idea to get some type of insurance. You can purchase this with your plane tickets, or a package on your own, or perhaps your credit card(s) offer some type of protection. I found out the life insurance I have with my employer also offers a special travel assistance program, so it’s good to check!