One of the goals of our trip is to visit Spanish cities we have not been to before and to see places that are off-the-beaten track from the regular tourist route. We love Granada, Malaga and Cordoba, but have spent time in those cities, so we did not want to spend a lot of time retracing our steps. We learned about Cartagena while watching a Spanish TV show that was shot there and knew it had a lot of history, so we thought it could be a fun town to explore. We also thought that, like Huelva, there would not be a ton of tourists in Cartagena. Clearly, we did not do our research.
We arrived via bus and checked in with our Airbnb host by 2:30 PM. Perfect time for lunch in Spain. Our host recommended any restaurant in the area that did not have a menu in English and suggested the plaza around the corner. A few of the restaurants in Plaza San Francisco were packed, others only had tables in the sun. We opted for one with a limited menu, but shade. We ordered lunch and took in the beauty of the plaza that was ringed with 19th century buildings and had huge trees in the center.
When we arrived at the restaurant most of the others eating there were Spanish, but by the time we were halfway through our meal the tables around us were filled with were people speaking English, Dutch and German. After our rainy week in Huelva, where we rarely saw another tourist, we wondered what brought these people to Cartagena. Were they students in the university? Archeologists or academics studying the history of Spain? But the families with young kids did not fit into either of those categories. How did they get here?
The waiter did not seem happy with the out-of-town crowd, many of whom did not speak Spanish, including a German-speaking couple who asked if the waiter would speak to them in English—“English, please,” they said in an annoyed tone. The service in the restaurant was slow and the food not great. We chalked it up to making a bad restaurant choice on our first day, which we did, but then we walked into the center of the old town and went to the port.
There were more and more tourists as we approached the port and we kept wondering–how did so many people find this city? What brought them here? Then we saw the ship. A Sun Princess cruise ship that looked 4 times larger than our 100-unit Brooklyn apartment building. It was one of those boats that, to me, looked so big that it should not be able to float, let alone carry thousands of people across an ocean. It was similar to the boats we saw in the port in Red Hook, but larger.
We understood.
We knew that Barcelona had become swamped with tourists since cruise ships had started to arrive there, we did not know that Cartagena was on the same route. After seeing the cruise ship we saw Cartagena differently. This is a town of about 200K people. What does it feel like to have 3K people who don’t speak your language pour into your city every day? No wonder the waiter was not very friendly in that first restaurant.
Around 4 or 5 pm we heard the Love Boat theme on the horn of the boat. The ship was off for its next port. They were heading north to Mallorca or west to Portugal and we were finding our bearings in this city.
We woke up the next morning on the defensive. Was Tuesday the only cruise ship day or would there be a different boat every day? I did some Googling. Cruisemapper.com revealed that boats arrived every day and some days two boats come to the port. We would be sharing the sights, and this city, with thousands of other tourists.
For our second day we went to the market, which was north from the port, and also got a reservation for lunch. After lunch we walked down to the port and saw a much smaller ship than the day before. The main draw of Cartagena is its well-preserved Roman and Carthaginian ruins. At the end of the day, when we thought the ship was getting ready to pull out, we went to the Museo del Teatro Romano—a Roman theatre had been excavated in the 90s, found below a row of houses. The location also had a 13th century church built on it, so like other spots in Spain the museum was a walk through many layers of history and one of the best museums we saw on our trip as it was well laid out and the theatre was stunning.
On Thursday we walked to the beach closest to town and felt the calm of the Mediterranean for the first time. Cala Cortina is a cove beach and while it looked like it could get packed in summer, it was beautiful in early April. There is a restaurant, Mares Bravas, adjacent to the beach and we had a lovely meal of mussels, grilled octopus and patatas bravas. The round trip walk to the beach was about 5 miles, so we got our steps in and although I don’t like cold water, it was warm enough that I might have gone in had we brought our bathing suits.
After accepting the fact that we were sharing the city with the cruise ship visitors we stayed away from the main shopping street until after 5 PM and didn’t notice the tourists as much as we did the first day. We went to a museum that housed the remains of a Punic wall and told the story of the Carthaginians in Cartagena. This museum was a twenty-minute walk from the port and we were the only visitors there. I knew very little about the Carthaginians and left the museum with a better sense of the cycle of people who invaded Spain over the centuries.
On our final day, when we took boat tour of the harbor and saw up close the military base, where they house a submarine, forts along the entrance to the port and the two lighthouses, I understood why the cruise ships come here. Cartagena is a historical port in Spain with multiple museums within walking distance from the port—why not share that history with people who are cruising by?
Cool explanation of Cartagena!!!! The huge ships are a nightmare.!!!!!!! 😊