Tuesday, 11 January 2022 – Photos of the Day – Cartagena, Columbia

TUESDAY, 11 JANUARY 2022 CARTAGENA COLOMBIA Overnight Stay All Onboard: 12Noon Departure 12:30 PM

TODAY’S WEATHER
Mostly Sunny High: 89°F 32°C Low: 74°F 23°C
DRESS CODE: INFORMAL
For Ladies: DRESSES OR PANTSUITS
For Gentlemen: JACKETS (TIE OPTIONAL)
No shorts or flip flop type footwear after 6:00 PM in indoor venues

CARTAGENA, COLOMBIA
Cartagena is a city of a thousand stories and more, steeped in a history that invokes admiration.
When it was founded in 1533 by Spanish conquistador Pedro de Heredia, Cartagena was the only port
on the South American mainland.

Cartagena’s magnificent city walls and fortresses, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, enclose a
well-restored historic center (the Cuidad Amurallada, or walled city) with plazas, churches,
museums, and shops that have made it a lively coastal vacation spot for South Americans and others.

New hotels and restaurants make the walled city a desirable place to stay, and the formerly
down-at-the-heels Getsemaní neighborhood attracts those seeking a bohemian buzz. As night falls and
the sun is drunk down by the Caribbean just on the other side of the wall, the city unfurls: the
streets and plazas mill with horse carriages, street musicians, the odd vendor of grilled cheese
arepas; restaurants explode onto the sidewalks; and the city flexes her ever-growing gastronomic bravado.

Today, Cartagena is blooming, open, and in touch with the world more than ever, having been
re-created and reimagined as a city of romance, with polished wooden balconies, ancient brickwork,
and vibrantly colored bougainvillea fleshing out the air that is already thick with the Caribbean climate.

SIGHTS
• Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas
• Plaza de la Independencia
• Church of San Pedro Claver
• Palacio de la Inquisición
• Las Murallas (city walls)
CUSINE
Cartagena has excellent restaurants offering seafood, traditional Colombian dishes, or international cuisine.

We went on another 1/2 day trip to see more sights of Old Town Cartagenia and the original fortifications. You just have to look at the amount of work the Spanish put into protecting this colonial gem of a city back in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, to know that Cartagena was an incredibly valuable possession. The galleons that set sail from here back to Spain would have been full of precious gold and silver that would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars in today’s money – the values of each ship’s treasures are mind-boggling.