Short version: stay inside the walls, and book early
Stay inside the walled city, as close to the venue as you can get, and book the room before you book the flight. Cartagena weddings run across three or four days and almost all of it happens on foot inside the walls. A room ten minutes away by taxi sounds fine until it's 2am, everyone is barefoot, and you're the only one queuing for a cab.
We're on Carrera 7 in San Diego, the quieter corner of the walled city, and we have ten rooms. That number matters more than anything else on this page. A wedding party of any size books us out, so the guests who dither end up in a different neighbourhood.
Book in this order
- Room first, flight second. Rooms inside the walls go before flights do for a popular wedding weekend. Flights to Cartagena you can almost always find.
- Ask the couple for the venue and the start time. Everything else follows from those two facts.
- Add a night on the front. More on this below, because it's the single thing that saves wedding guests the most grief.
- Then sort the airport.
Add the night before. Seriously
Early check-in with us is free, but it depends on availability and we can't guarantee it. That's fine for a normal trip and not fine on a wedding day, when you have a 4pm ceremony, a garment bag, and nowhere to change. If you're landing on the morning of, book the night before and the room is simply yours when you walk in. It costs one night and removes the only genuinely stressful part of the weekend.
The other end is easier. Late checkout is 100,000 pesos, which is the right money to spend when the party ran until the small hours and your flight isn't until the evening.
What it costs to hold the room
Because there are only ten of us, a deposit holds a reservation. Cancel in writing to hola@townhousecartagena.com at least 30 days ahead and you get 50% of the reservation total back. Destination weddings shed guests, so read that line properly before you book for a cousin who is still saying maybe.
Book direct with us and breakfast is included. We'll also match a lower rate you find on an online travel agency like Agoda, as long as you show us and then book with us.
Getting from the airport
Our airport transfer is 120,000 pesos for up to four people, or 200,000 pesos for five or more. Rafael Núñez is close to the walled city, which is the nicest surprise about arriving here. If you're a group of four splitting one car, that's the easy answer, and it means nobody is negotiating a fare at midnight with a dress over their arm.
Driving yourself is the rare case, but if you are: there are several parking options near us, and we can reserve you a spot at a nearby garage for an extra €15 per night. Nobody inside the walls wants your car, including you.
Bring your actual passport
Every guest has to be registered at check-in with a national passport or a Colombian ID card. The real document, not a photo, not a copy. And there are no swaps or additions after the fact, so the friend who decides at 1am that they're crashing in your room cannot. This trips up more wedding parties than anything else we see, usually the group who booked one room for two and arrived as four.
Rooms, and who should take what
The Two-Bedroom Suite and the Two-Bedroom Penthouse Suite are the ones to fight over: two bedrooms, one door, which is how you put two couples or a family together without anybody sleeping on a sofa. Below those we have Deluxe Queen/Twin, Superior Double/Twin and Standard Double/Twin rooms, and the twin configuration is the quiet hero of wedding weekends, because half the guest list is friends travelling together rather than couples.
Your room was painted by a local artist, not a decorator, so they are not identical and the photos are worth a look before you pick. If you want a quieter one, say so in the special requests field when you book and we'll do what we can.
The rooftop, and the honest warning
Our rooftop is open until midnight and it gets loud after dark. That is the point of it, and it's also the reason we tell people straight: if you want colonial hush and an early night, we're probably not your spot. For a wedding weekend that's usually an advantage. It's where your group ends up for the first drink before the welcome dinner, and where the survivors end up the night after.
There's a rooftop pool up there too, and a day pass for two costs €25 if friends staying elsewhere want to come and melt through the afternoon before the ceremony. Downstairs, the Lobby Bar is our Members Only room, with live music, and it kicks off around 9 on Friday and Saturday nights.
Where we are
San Diego is the north-east corner of the walled city, named for Plaza de San Diego, the square at the end of our block. It's residential in a way the streets nearer the clock tower aren't, which is why the walk home at 3am is a pleasant one rather than a scrum. Getsemaní, where most late-night wedding afterparties drift, is a walk of a few blocks beyond the walls. We've written separate guides to both, linked below.
This is a place to stay that's also a place the city comes to, which for a wedding weekend means you don't have to go anywhere to find the group. They'll be upstairs.