MONDAY, JANUARY 17, Cartagena, Columbia

Dick is up at 6:45AM and works on this blog while enjoying a mocha coffee in the coffee bar. Morning is his time of day. We are planning to go into Old Town again for pictures prior to the "All on Board" time of 12:30PM for our 1PM sailing.

Carolyn wakes up at 8AM to an empty room. She decides to go ahead and get up and dressed and heads down to Deck 5 where a member of the Cartagena tourist board is stationed to answer questions and give directions for the guests going ashore independently. The lady is very helpful and gives Carolyn a plan.
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Back in the room we head to breakfast about 8:30AM. We are off the ship by 9:30AM and head into town. There is a free shuttle to the terminal shop. In 2002 Celia and Carolyn found some nice items here, but today there is mostly "Made in China" stuff. We catch a taxi in front of the terminal building. The driver speaks some English and takes us to the Maria Teresa Charleston Hotel just inside the City Wall. He offers to come back to pick us up, but we don’t know how long we will last, so we pass. We walk a big loop past the Plaza Bolivar,

 stick our head into the Cathedral where mass is being celebrated and

walk on to Plaza de Santo Domingo and Santo Domingo Church where they are also celebrating mass.

We stop in a couple of shops looking at the interesting handcrafts and the beautiful linen clothing (at a beautiful price...$370 for a ladies top) and for a pin for Jack. Dick climbs up on the City Wall for some pictures

then we head to the Clock Tower and its plaza,

on around to San Pedro Church where we were last night....

taking lots of pictures of the wonderful architecture along the way.

 

There are very few street vendors and the ones that come up are easily discouraged with a "No gracias"! The Old City has really cleaned up its act since 2002 and it is a pleasure to walk around now. It is 11AM and we want to get back by 11:45 so we head back to the hotel for a taxi. One last stop at a nice handcraft shop where we buy a carved wooden "Mother and Child" decorated with threads of colored wheat, very much like the bronze one we found of the Massai Madonna while we were in Africa in 2009.

After a fast, but fortunately uneventful taxi ride we reboard the ship at 11:50. A shower, a room service lunch and a nap take care of Carolyn for the afternoon, Dick cleans up and goes to the Deck Grill for a hamburger and beer. He gets involved on the computer and misses his Trivia! Time passes so fast we almost forget to go to dinner....almost! Finally, about 8PM, we go down to the dinning room. It is unusually crowded and we are asked if we will start a new shared table...we reluctantly agree as we are not really in a sociable mood. In a couple of minutes Brian, the future cruise consultant is seated with us and the service begins. He is very friendly, a transplanted Irishman, and we talk travel most of the evening. The wines don’t ring our chimes to night so we ask for a Shiraz. They bring a bottle of Koonunga Hill 2006 from Southern Australia. We enjoy it and ask to have a bottle sent to the room. Dick has the spring roll, clam chowder and the Ossobuco. Carolyn has the spring roll, Caesar salad and spaghetti. We both have rum raisin ice cream.

It is almost 9:30PM so we go to the Constellation Theater to see the Le Cirque Mariner. It proves to be an enjoyable evening of exotic song, dance and high flying aerial routines...impressive especially given this is a small ship. We are done for now and head for bed. It only takes three passes runs of the elevator to get get one with space to take us from deck 5 to deck 10.

To morrow the Panama Canal...our fifth time through.