Friday, April 18, 2025 - Catagena

The ship docked early today in Cartagena. Our docking location was literally in the city, making it easy to navigate our off-ship time.

Today I’d booked a tour through Spain Day Tours to visit Murcia and Cartagena with a guide. After breakfast we met up with Kim from Atlanta, who’d organized the trip. We walked down to meet our guide and we ended up being a group of 14, all Azamara guests.

Our guide, Pedro, was awesome and the tour was great. We first traveled by bus to Murcia, the largest city in the region. As we approached Murcia we stopped at a beautiful church with a super lookout over the area.

Following that we headed into town, and Pedro let us know that due to Holy Week he wasn’t sure what we’d find. We were lucky that a procession was taking place, but since this was happening we could sneak in the side door of the cathedral. Nice to have a guide who could point out many of the features. 

From there he walked us around a bit and we had a few minutes to explore on our own. Murcia is known as a city of flowers, and the flowers in the parks were spectacular.

After our Murcia tour it was back on the bus for our return to Cartagena (about 30 miles). Once there Pedro gave us all a great tour of the old town, pointing out historic buildings along the way. He took us in a back way to see the Roman Theater, built between 7 and 2 BC. Hard to fathom the depth of history here.

He then discovered that it was open access to see floats being prepped for a procession the next day. What a highlight to see people working on the huge floats and get an up close glimpse.

Eventually our tour ended and we stayed in the city for some time on our own. Kim and her group of 4 invited us to join them for a glass of wine, but after sitting in a cafe for a long time and not being waited on we packed it in.

John and I tried a second cafe but had the same experience so left once more. We finally located a friendly place and split a delicious chicken paella. John also tried a cafe asiático, a specialty in the region, which includes liquor 43, cinnamon and condensed milk. He thought it was a winner.

By this time it was 3:30 or so and we walked back to the ship. We both ended up napping, then went up to the Living Room for a drink. We ran into Pam and John there, and all ate dinner together at Windows Cafe, nabbing a window table as we pulled out of port.

Following dinner we all trooped down to the Cabaret Theater for an 8 pm talk by the professor, and then stayed for a musical show at 9. After this we went to Mosaic Cafe and enjoyed coffee, cocoa and conversation before bed.