Cartagena, Spain
April 11, 2025
What difference a day makes! Waking up in Cartegena was like a dream compared to yesterday. Although the weather remained cloudy and breezy, what a refreshing change from Gibraltar. We were moored right near the central old town and main square so again, venturing out on our own seemed like the way to go. They apparently had a big red “hop on, hop off” bus but we never saw it, so we jumped on one of those 4 car mini train type vehicles to get an overview of the city.
It rattled us around for 45 minutes while the driver narrated a brief history of the town through tinny speakers. The price was right, and the information was good but after bumping down ancient brick roads on hard seats for almost an hour admittedly we were happy to get off. As it turned out it was a local holiday being the first day of Easter week in their community. I thought that was Palm Sunday but what do I know. Anyway, some fun facts about Cartegena include that it is the second oldest city in Spain (behind Cádiz) and was first settled by the Phoenicians, followed by the Carthaginians and then the Romans in about 200 BC. A few things made it attractive to these early inhabitants. It has a great natural harbor, plenty of natural resources like iron, zinc and salt which they still mine today, and it has 5 very large hills that are good for fortresses and fighting the requisite enemies.
They were digging up some ground for a parking garage in the ‘80s and surprise! They stumbled upon a huge Roman amphitheater which they have now uncovered and somewhat restored. There are 2000 years of beautiful architecture scattered around the old town of 250,000 inhabitants and it was remarkably clean and well cared for. There was one small Windstar cruise ship in town but not adding enough tourists to be a bother.
We wandered around for a couple of hours and then the action started at about noon. Locals started coming out of the woodwork and there were parades with drums and horns and folks dressed in traditional costumes. The favorite of the non-participants pastime was to plop down at a café near the square, order tapas and drinks and watch the festivities. So of course that is what we did! We needed our seafood fix that we missed out on the day before. Everybody seemed to know everyone else and greeting each other heartily. It was fun to be in the middle of it.
The breezy winds calmed down and although the sun only came out for about 30 seconds, we were quite comfortable to sit outside and eat for about an hour and a half. We found the Cartegenians quite cordial, a contrast to all the curt and stressed-out locals we had encountered in Gibraltar.
After a lovely and relaxing break, we headed back to the ship in plenty of time for our sail away at 4PM. There is a sea day tomorrow as we make our way to Malta.
The view we woke up to
Getting ready for our walkabout
Picture of all the historical sites to see in old town
The Roman amphitheater they discovered in the ‘80s when building a parking garage
Tapas course #1 - from left to right: potato salad on crunchy bread stick topped with anchovy (local specialty), steamed mussels with lemon, fried calamari with spicy mayo
Tapas course #2 - Paella
They take lent very seriously in this town. Probably 1 in 10 balconies were decorated in some way.
Town hall and main square. You can see our ship through the trees to the left.
I snapped this right as we were pulling away. They were rushing off to join the festival in their traditional costumes