I’ve been told that the Santa Clara Hotel is where dignitaries stay when visiting Cartagena, which means that the hotel's lounge El Coro Bar is where the dignitaries get drunk. I’m always a sucker for stardom and visited El Coro Bar twice during my first visit to Cartagena, if for no other reason than to recline on the sofas of celebrity and to pee in the urinals of fame.

The bar area itself, I learned from their website, was “once a convent where nuns of the Order of St. Clare intoned their ecclesiastical canticles.” I don’t even know what that means and I want to go back. That’s how cool it is.

Framed by giant wooden doors, El Coro Bar has a super chic feel to it, created by the increasingly common style of nouveau furniture beneath vaulted historic ceilings. A great place to start off the night, El Coro Bar has cute waitresses, live music, and their own private tobacconist (a profession I never even knew existed but wanted to use desperately).  The drinks sit on the more expensive end of the Cartagena nightlife scale: a few bucks for a beer, a few more for a mixed drink. I remember my friend Dan trying to get the waitresses number here. "Ole," he said. "Como estoy?" She looked with some confusion and replied good, thank you. Dan followed that up with his favorite line. "y hoy?"

While you don’t have to be a guest of the Santa Clara Hotel to hang out here, you’d be doing yourself a favor by wandering the grounds of one of Cartagena’s most majestic accommodations. Check out the royal pool spanning, what looks like, the space of a small soccer field. Notice the double-walled feature (a product of renovation), the insane ocean-view terrace, or the pet toucan that sits under a desk in the hotel lobby.

On the weekends, El Coro Bar fills up with trendy locals. On weekdays, it’s more common to find tourists. The bar is well stocked with all the liquor you’d expect and things get going around the early evening, before which the vibe is almost as chill as your living room: perfect for an afternoon read. In the midst of high season, expect pre-gamers to sip martinis and mojitos to the tunes of a local house DJ. The décor is made to resemble an antique French library, certainly not the type of place I envision these sorts of parties going down.

El Coro Bar Address:

Hotel Sofitel Santa Clara

39-29 centro calle del torno

Cartagena , Colombia