Medellín

Medellín is the city of eternal spring, and the cliché holds: seventy degrees in January, seventy degrees in July, with afternoon thunderstorms that pass in twenty minutes. The setting — a long narrow valley walled in by green Andean ridges — is dramatic; the city built into it has, in two decades, become one of Latin America's most interesting urban projects.

Stay in El Poblado for the design hotels, the third-wave coffee, the chef-led restaurants of Provenza. Spend a morning in the Comuna 13 with a guide — the metrocable and the outdoor escalators tell the story of how the city changed. Walk Plaza Botero downtown for the sculpture and the energy. Take the cable car up to Parque Arví for an afternoon of cloud forest above the city.

Medellín is not a beach trip and it is not a relaxing one. It is a city, with all that implies. But it is also the most interesting urban stop in Colombia, and for many travelers the one they come back to.