Quito, Ecuador

CREDIT: COURTESY OF HOTEL CARLOTA, A MEMBER OF DESIGN HOTELS

High in the Andes, the Ecuadorean capital, with its unwieldy urban sprawl and car-centric downtown, has never quite held the allure of Rio or Lima when wanderlust strikes. The city’s been making real strides to address that: Several years ago, Quito moved its airport from the city center to its fringes in an effort to make landings less treacherous and satisfy noise-addled locals, and work is underway to transform the former terminal into a public park. Now, the long-awaited 2020 opening of Quito’s first-ever underground railway line, running 14 miles north-south, promises to truly transform Ecuador’s mountain city, putting once-inaccessible neighborhoods within reach and bringing locals downtown. The city’s skyline is changing, as the likes of Moishe Safdie and Jean Nouvel are enlisted for major new buildings in town. And after last year’s protests caused damage in the area, a community restoration effort has brought the Spanish Colonial Centro Historico back to its former glory. Check into the 12-room Carlota Hotel, and don’t miss a meal at Nuema, the much-lauded Ecuadorian restaurant that moved to a new space in San Marcos last year. —Lila Harron Battis