A DAY IN CARTAGENA

March 8, 2020

First, no presents tonight.  I guess they are over us, or they have figured out we aren’t the Diamond Level people whose names were originally on door.  Oh the sadness.  But with 10 days left there is always hope.

Along with 14 other hearty souls we loaded our small bus to explore the old parts of Cartagena.  We saw some places we had visited before when we did a transit on the Pacific Princess a couple of years ago, and some new things as well.  One of the nicest things of this excursion, our tour guide didn’t steer us to places she knew who would give her a kickback if we bought anything – the last tour guide did, much to our displeasure. 

My favorite part was walking through Getsemani.  As I suggested last night, it is pronounced like the Garden of Gethsemane, and is, in fact, named for that reference in the New Testament.  It is the oldest part of the city, and the place where the indigenous people and the African slaves lived.  The architecture reflected the fact that were considered “low class,” but now a 5 star hotel is being built in the center of Getsemani, and property values are skyrocketing – think of property along Washington Road in Augusta near a certain well-know golf course.  Trying to hold on to their heritage, some of the residents have done street paintings, street murals, showing their culture.  I have some great pictures which I will upload into a final blog of the cruise once we get home.

All together, we walked four miles after being bussed from section to section.  It was a nice day.

Back on board we had Guy Ferrie cheeseburgers, ice cream cones, and a nap.  Lots of good veggies for dinner tonight, preceded by an appetizer of legs of frog – at least that was my appetizer (the chicken Milanese was just so-so).

Well, I’m tired and I’m going to let Mom blog and then we are going to turn on HGTV and hope to catch some remodeling, flipping shows.

TTFN

In total today we have almost 12,000 steps and over 4 and fourth miles. I am tired. I even took a nap today. Most days I can’t seem to fall asleep.

On our tour today there was a family that had two severely handicapped children both in wheel chairs. The older looked to be about 14 was lifted by his father onto the steps of the bus and he used his knees and arms to pull himself up and into a seat. He was not able to use his lower legs or feet. He was very interested in the things we saw and talked and asked questions. Nice young man. T he other young man appeared to be about 8 or 9  and seemed to be severely mentally handicapped as well as physical. He had to be carried by, I think, an other sister on and off the bus and he sat on her lap through the bus rides. He never spoke or communicated to anyone that I saw. A difficult task for parents to take these two children, but they all seemed to enjoy their trip.  As did we. I remembered quite a bit of the things that we saw and it was fun remembering places. It was also nice to see some new things.

During our first stop Kathy, our tour guide, took us to a hotel that had been created out of what had been two family homes. It was very nice. We went up to the roof top where there was a swimming pool and a large lounge area. There were steps as well as elevators. We walked up but rode down. One of the flights of stairs was shaped like the stairs in my Mom and Dad’s house at 12 Beckley Road and it made me think of all the times I had slipped and slide down them.  On the top was a bar and the bartender made us a complimentary local drink, non alcoholic but it can contain rum, to try. It was very good, it gave your Dad a brain freeze. I will try and make it when I get home. You put one part lime juice, three parts coconut cream and one to three smaller parts of simple syrup, depending on how sweet you like it, and lots of ice and put it in a blender and blend. UMMM good.

At the end of the tour the tour bus is not allowed to take you back to the ship, but they leave you off just outside the port in an area where they have a small zoo area and a large gift shop. There were peacocks, toucans, parrots, flamingos, and much more.  While dad was taking pictures of the toucans there was one of them laying on the ground near where he was standing and it came over and attacked his trouser leg. Strange.

Well, we got back on the ship and unloaded our stuff and had lunch and napped. I woke up just as it was all aboard time. We got to watch the sail away from our window because the Captain had backed the ship out and turned around. Very cool.

Now last night when we went to bed, I fixed my phone so it wouldn’t automatically update. Your Dad did too. He set his alarm for 6:30 so we could get up, have breakfast and meet for our tour at 8:15 on the dock. Well, his alarm went off at “6:30" or so we thought. But because the calendar program in the phones, as well as in my kindle and on my watch they had all changed to Daylight savings time.  So it was actually 5:30 ships time. We were up an hour early. We thought our time was wrong because it was still pitch black outside and sunrise was at 6:15. So I called guest services and asked and yes indeed it was only 5:30.  Crazy!!

The show tonight is not my favorite. It is 80's music and the music is so loud it is very difficult to hear the singers. The costumes on the young ladies are very revealing. A little too much flesh for me. Oh well I am old.

We are back in our room. I am having some coke zero and he is having mountain dew. We will have a  little TV and then off to bed. Love you all. Hope everybody is feeling better.

Mom, Granny and Bonnie