| Casa Boutique Veranera |
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| Written by Editor |
| Friday, 07 May 2010 14:38 |
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There’s a certain charm about vacationing not in a hotel but in someone’s home. Especially when that someone’s home is a swank colonial villa dead smack in the center of old-town Cartagena. Open the miniature door to Casa Boutique Veranera, and you enter another world. It’s perfectly representative of the historic district’s mystery and allure: that behind each wall there’s a story to experience pulling on the strings of years past…if you have a reservation of course. For me, Cartagena has perfected the notion of the boutique hotel, with handfulls of the neighborhood’s old crumbling buildings snatched and renovated by visionary investors, then offered as nightly alternatives to the generic hotel options we’ve all come to despise. There are of course the personal touches that come with a boutique hotel – the service, the intimacy, the charm – but there is also a certain anonymity: a way of plunging oneself into the local environment, of becoming part of a home-grown community if only for a few days. The miniature door to Casa Boutique Veranera, a blink-and-you-might-miss-it building on Calle Quero in the San Diego district, opens from the street into a dim arched entryway and then into an open-air courtyard manned by an army of plants, flowers, and one large potted palm tree that droops like a canopy over the lounge area. The feeling is unmistakably tropical colonial: like you just accidentally walked into someone’s Spanish palace while looking for a quart of milk. There’s too a sense of the eclectic about its entryway, as there is about Casa Veranera as a whole: smooth lines and ornate details paired with modern fittings and unusual antiques: natural pastels and earth tones up against sleek glass doors and funky light fixtures. There’s the feeling here that everything has been hand-picked, hand-placed there by someone with way better design taste than you. There’s nothing like walking around somewhere open to the elements without the least bit concern about what you might step on. The immaculate floors made of traditional Colombia tiles led into what I’d almost call a parlor, a sitting area open to the street with several large comfortable couches, a large mirror that reached up to the ceiling, and an in-house, oversized Macintosh computer available to guests free of charge – think your favorite grassroots coffee shop transplanted back in time. This room is across from a small open-air dining area where guests at Casa Veranera eat breakfast (in reality, any meal they like, seeing as though the hotel’s staff and quality chef, is on call 24/7). In the basement is a massage studio as well as a fully equipped kitchen where the staff encourages guests to take free rein: only one small component of the homeliness factor you’ll embrace during your stay. Upstairs is a small dipping pool and two chaise lounges for sunning, all of which have access to the house wireless Internet signal, something I’m guessing the original architect of this 400 year-old building had not exactly foreseen. The remodeling of Casa Veranera was done with respect to the home’s original floor plans, a touch that has a way of reminding you what Cartagena was and where it is going. That being said, upon hearing my suite had a fully stocked private fridge, I knew exactly where I was going. The rooms are Cartagena-chic: this bizarre contrast of antique woodwork (floors tucked together with wooden pegs), cutting edge technology (rooms come with plasma TVs and pre-programmed iPods and docking station), and an inherent historical aura that, on paper may sound haphazard, but in reality is hands-down seductive. My suite consisted of a small sitting area, sectioned off bathroom with rainforest shower head, spacious bedroom, and private roof terrace with spectacular views of the real Cartagena: contrasts of history, architecture, socio-economic levels, and lifestyles. Similar to what a famous American author once said about New York City “anyone that lives anywhere else is somehow kidding himself.” If you go to Cartagena or Colombia in general and don't spend time at a place like Casa Boutique Veranera, you're just not a serious traveler. It’s a hotel that breathes Cartagena life from the perspective of an insider on ground level. This as opposed to a tourist on floor 59. |
