Serving up Cartagena’s best breakfast with a social mission to boot, Café Stepping Stone, is a really great way to kickstart your day in Cartagena.
Type of Food: Healthy Eating
Price Range: $
Address: Getsemani, Calle San Andres 30-40, Cartagena, Bolívar
Neighbourhood: Getsemaní
Rating: TIC User Rating
Rating: Trip Advisor
Lifelong Aussie besties, Tom Navakas, Vanessa Brettell, dreamed up this busy brunch joint with a social bent on a bus on a backpacker trip through Slovenia.
Getsemani, Cartagena was lucky to be the first of what we hope will be a string of inspirational coffee shops designed to give travelers a great breakfast and locals a life-changing helping hand.
The café’s third founder, Hannah Costello, joined the team shortly after the venture set up shop in its first venue on Calle San Andres.
Hannah and Tom’s brilliant brunches and healthy eating recipes have been a serious hit with the flashpacker crowd craving avocado toasts, flat whites and falafel burgers on their travels.
The very reasonable brunch for two includes a veritable smorgasbord of fresh fruit, eggs how you like them served with spinach, avocado mushrooms on homemade bread with coffee and orange juice.
Throw an hour of all-you-can drink bloody Marys into the mix and you have Cartagena's most desirable breakfast.
Rammed to the rafters on the weekends, Café Stepping Stone, thrives on the familiarity of its menu for those in search of some home comforts on the road.
There are bacon rolls, tofu tacos, delicious pancakes, smashed avocados with poached eggs or a mezze platter which includes falafel, hummus, grilled aubergine, olives and tabbouleh to try during your stay.
What makes it all taste even better is Tom and Vanessa’s social mission to give their staff a fast-track introduction to the jobs market.
The dynamic trio work hard to teach employees the basics, bring them up to speed before helping them find a place where they can put it all into practice before starting the process all over again with the next team.
Bravo!
Cartagena's second historic walled city has gone from no-go to must-go in less than five years thanks to some of the city's hippest new bars and restaurants.
If Centro is Manhattan, Getsemani is more Brooklyn – an up-and-coming hipster hangout trying desperately to cling to its roots.
A little rougher around the edges than the already gentrified districts of Centro and San Diego and the lofty ambitions of the beach districts, Getsemaní offers a glimpse into the more unruly historic centre of the past.
A fiercely traditional barrio offering a heady mix of bars, dancing, affordable diners, hostels and hotels for backpackers and bohemian colonists looking to mix it up with the carefree locals.
Historically populated by merchants, smugglers and freed slaves thriving from activity in the port and main marketplace, Getsemaní has always been more raucous than the hoity centre with all its regal airs and graces.
Much of the district's newest bars, follow in the city's loudest traditions.
While much of the area's carefree population are direct descendants of the hell-raisers of yesteryear it is no longer the terrifying place that rich Cartageneros used to scare their children into staying at home.
Backpackers, never averse to roughing it for a cheap place to stay have braved the bogeyman with few problems for decades and a growing number of boutique hotels and hostels have followed their lead setting up shop in some of the bigger properties on Calle Guerrero and Calle del Carretero.
Uber-hotel chains, Viceroy and the Four Seasons have plans to kick the barrio into the stratosphere with stellar openings in 2017 / 2018.
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