Cartagena Spain

He Said . . .

This Cartegena was vastly different than the Cartagena we experience in Columbia, machine gun toting soldiers on every corner, none of that here.  If was an early morning, typical breakfast and the like then an easy hump across the main drag to begin our day.  Now mind you we did this one on our own not because we couldn’t find an excursion but because the only excursion they offered was a walking tour of the city that began at the pier, we joked about just following them and hiding behind the trees, that wouldn’t be required today.

First stop, Mayor street, the Las Rambles of Cartagena, other than it was a pedestrian only street the similarities were non-existent.  There were a few cute shops and we did some window shopping, Ami almost made an impulsive shoe purchase but I had to put the kibosh on it due to weight restriction concerns for the flight home.  We’ll be back to Mayor in a bit!!

Now of to see the Roman amphitheatre, a bit of a trudge up a pretty good hill but the effort paid off, they were well restored and it was quite easy to imagine a morale performance for the locals going on while we were watching the comings and goings of the locals as we admired something so well preserved considering when it was built.  Just imagine one of our homes lasting for 2,000 years with no maintenance, good luck!!

From there it was a schlog, yes a schlog, to the top of the Conception Castle at the top of the hill but we were already committed, if the excursion was heading up that hill then we were too by God!!  The only mildly strange thing that we encountered during the trek was the willingness of two couples to throw caution to the wind and skip the line to pay the entrance fee, I mentioned to Ami that I don’t think committing a crime in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language, and more importantly, the conditions of the jails, not all that much lower on the priority list, the condition of the inmates jailed in this city made us both wonder why anyone would try something so foolish, pure silliness and lack of thought.  But the views were incredible, I’m sure Ami has already regaled you with them.  The cistern building was impressive and wondered if slave labor was used for the excavation work?  I thought it would have been based on the uprisings and expulsion of the Muslims (Moriscos, I believe) during the middle ages.  Very interesting, they basically knocked down the mosques and built churches on the ruin sites and made them convert by providing tax breaks.  It worked and those than didn’t convert were eventually provided a “package” to leave.  

On the trip back down we had to see what the big hubbub was with Parque de San Francisco, it was a MUCH nicer trip down, we went back by the amphitheatre, walked over two blocks and we were there, nothing much really to speak of, a few restaurants and locals milling around with kids in tow, we sat down and watched life play out on our stage, people watching is truly fascinating; we did see a “woman” that was so over the top and had on 6” heels, making “her” about 6’7”, with a giant adam’s apple, I told Ami it was a guy, she has the pic if you want to weigh in with your assessment, just ask her!!

From there we attempted to find a restaurant off the beaten path but the restaurant highlighted on the back of our tourism map was no more and we moved back to Mayor Street to find the one thing Ami had to have, paella!!  We found a wifi restaurant that had Sangria on the board and we went in.  Now at this point I was able to get a table, order drinks as well as the paella and get Ami to the bathroom all in Spanish, and I’m telling you it was in Spanish, this “muy bonita hermosa” spoke less English than I spoke Spanish; I thought it went incredibly well, my very first, all in a foreign language, successful implementation, I told Ami to throw out a “muy agradable” when the paella showed up but it fell to me.  “Uno Mas Sangria” and Ami was off to upload pics from the day; it was a fantastic feeling to at least not starve to death, thank you Memrise.  

We made the return trip down Mayor back to front street, then back to the ship, we were done in about 5 hours soup to nuts.  Fortunately it’s a very walkable town and I found out that Paella wasn’t on my top 10 list, but the clams, chicken, mussels and calamari were all fantastic so all in all it was very edible; by the way, the portion could have fed 4-5 easily!!!  

It was a great day and I enjoyed seeing it with Skeeter, yes, Skeeter and btw the nickname pre-dates “The Help” in case you were wondering; she tolerates it now but she’s NEVER liked it!!!  Malaga tomorrow, and if any of you are watching 90 day fiance you should know that I will be on the lookout for the cute young lady that flew from Florida to Malaga to meet a guy, that’s pretty gutsy, but after watching them here I suspect he’s a cad and she should dump him, I’ll catch up on the trash TV when we get back home.  Until then…

She Said . . .

We have now been to two Cartagenas; the one in Columbia and the one in Spain.  Two very different cities.  The one is Spain is rich with the history of hundreds and hundreds of years.

What To Do?  What To Do?

This time Rick Steves let us down.  We bought his whole book of Spain and the only city we are visiting that is in the book is Barcelona, for which we have the pocket guide.  A bit of a waste of money but who's to say we won’t be back?

So to determine what to do, I watched the TV channel that talked about our destination and then looked at the excursion descriptions.  I found there was a walking tour for $60.00 that starts right from the pier.  Well, if they were walking directly from the pier, we can do exactly what they are doing but on our own.

For a few minutes there was talk about just showing up and either blending into the group or simply following them.

But it was easy enough to pick up a map from the tourist information booth right there on the pier, probably where the walking tour was to meet, and do it on our own.

I feel we enhanced the walking tour by ditching a lesser choice of going up a “Panoramic Lift” and rather doing the Conception Castle, which was near the lift (an elevator in a black metal mesh tube with stairs spiraling up around it) but was higher up providing a much better view.  Now we don’t know our view was indeed better, but it was higher than the lift, so I would assume it is.

Once we got the map, we sat down, circled our destinations, and identified a tentative order.  We are on vacation, so tentative is good.

The Sites

The town was easy to get around as it is small in comparison to our other stops and the map was quite accurate and non-confusing.  Everything was grouped much closer together than in Barcelona, so we did not have to do as much walking.

We easily found Mayor street, a fancy shopping area.  We bought nothing.

Next was San Francisco Square which was just a square with a big statue of some man and some cool large trees.

We then made our way to the restored Roman amphitheatre.  Very cool.  I stopped and took a picture for a group of people so they could have everyone in their party in the picture.  There were about 5-6 of them.  Come to find out, they were on the Princess Cruise Line ship that was also in town.  They were from central Florida and their cruise started a couple days after ours but in Barcelona and will end up in Fort Lauderdale two days after ours.  The big disappointment there is they are stopping at Gibraltar, a place Blaise desperately wants to go and was trying hard before we left to find a way to get there from Malaga since we both swear when we booked this cruise in March there were excursions out to Gibraltar.

The Roman amphitheater was beautifully restored and if you looked our pictures on Facebook you will see it is stunning.

We then, quite accidentally stumbled upon the Conception Castle.  I didn’t think it was really much to write home about - the value was in the views from it since it was on top of a mountainy hill (not quite a mountain but too big for a hill).  From that vantage point we spied the “Panoramic Lift” and noted it was considerably lower in elevation than the Conception Castle so we ditched that option. We also saw the unrestored ruins of Roman colosseum. Listening to a tour guide for some other group we learned the reason there has been no movement on its restoration is a lack of agreement on exactly how the restoration should happen.  We walked up a ton of stairs to get up to the Conception Castle so I was sure my legs would be sore the next day.

This all took less than the 3 hours the Walking Tour excursion was scheduled to take and we even climbed up to Conception Castle, something not on the tour.

I think the highlight of the day was sitting in a restaurant sipping sangria and getting a taste of our first paella.  It was there I decided this part of our trip should be my sangria tour of Spain.  I spent that time in the restaurant uploading our Cartagena pictures to Facebook and irritating Dana via text while she was getting ready for work.

FYI, the sangria in Barcelona was better than in Cartagena.

Notables

Looks to be in fashion in Spain for young women to wear cut off blue jean shorts and black pantyhose.

The streets people walk and drive on in Cartagena are quite fancy - something you would see inside a home in the U.S. - tile and various types of stone work.

At breakfast, a man was walking by our table.  Blaise called him over, the guy bent down and Blaise whispered something to him.  The guy looked down and zipped up his pants and told me my husband just saved him.  Then he bent down and whispered something to Blaise who then chuckled and said “TMI.”  Later after the guy left I asked him what the guy said to him.  The guy said something to the effect “I don’t use it enough to keep track.”  Who says something like that to a total stranger?

Food Watch

Breakfast - nothing of note, just food from the breakfast buffet on the boat.

Lunch - Sangria and seafood and chicken paella with bread.  Thank you to Blaise for indulging my desire to try paella seeing that he is not a big rice fan.  I enjoyed the paella and sangria.

Dinner - We ate at the Luminae again.  We both had the crab cakes for an appetizer.  I have to say it was the best crab cake I have ever had.  For the entree’, Blaise had the black sea bass with a short rib marmalade which sat underneath the fish.  He let me have a bite and oh my Lord was it ever yummy.  I have to say his entree was better than mine but mine was still very delicious - some sort of hen with spaghetti squash.  The man sitting next to us as we sat down had to recommend his dessert saying it was absolutely amazing.  I did indeed get his dessert, whose name I can’t remember other than it started with a V.  But it had two different flavored sorbets, fruit (berries), and crunchy meringue stuff.  I agree with random man - it was yummy.  Blaise got the cheese plate and said it was good.

Injury Watch

Despite the many stairs and a couple stumbles from Blaise on the stairs (not me this time!), we both remained upright and injury free.