Saturday, April 9, 2016

Coral Princess - 5-15 April - Cartagena First Impressions...

First impressions are important. After reading Mitchner's book, "Caribbean", and how Nelson, the scourge of the Spanish Main, had been unable to successfully attack Cartagena, I had been anxious to see this port with an eye towards 18th Century warfare. 

With a slowing of our engines about 7am, it sounded like we might have been letting on a pilot. But this was two hours before our scheduled  docking time?  When I got dressed and went out about 7:15, sure enough trailing about a half mile behind was the pilot boat. And coming up on our port bow was a fort at the narrowest entrance to a long channel ahead.  Farther to the port bow, I could see skyscrapers lighted brightly by the rising sun.  Wow, this is one heck of a natural harbor!  

Fixed vs. Anytime / Early vs. Late dining - and who you're spending time with?  When you cruise as a two-some or perhaps a four-some, and sit at a two or four person table, you are going to get to know your waiter and assistant waiter better than anyone else on the ship.  The staff you interact with are probably 1/3 of your cruise experience with another 1/3 being your cabin, and the rest divided equally between food aboard and port calls. These proportions may vary based on length or rhythm (# of sea days vs port calls) of the itinerary or specific personal preferences, but suffice to say if you eat 2 meals a day in the main dining room and spend 90 minutes for each meal, and are aboard for 7 days, that's about 21 hours with your waiter and assistant waiter.  So if you are traveling as a couple or quartet,  it makes a lot of sense to choose fixed dining so you can build a relationship with your wait staff. Conversely, if you are in a large group or sitting at a large table, you will get less attention and chat time with your staff and the relationship will perhaps be less important than efficiency at getting your orders to the table and dishes cleared. Besides, when you are sitting in a large group, you are usually involved in two or more conversations with people sitting at your table.

The other important thing to consider is when to dine. Early dining is always the busier seating so more tables are full and the waiters are really busy. Late Dining is almost always less full and your staff has more time and opportunity to customize your order - "Oh, you'd like some caramel sauce on your mashed potatoes? No problem." - because kitchen staff is also less stressed.

On to Cartagena and honestly, the first time I've set foot on the continent of South America - and as it turns out, it was a very nice foot indeed.  Our focus was getting to see and know the old walled city - a UNESCO World Heritage site.

We waited about an hour after docking to make our way down the gangway to catch the bus for the port facilities.  The cruise ship docking is in the middle of a busy port -- no walking from dock to exit here.

After getting off the bus, we were in for a surprise...  Birds and wildlife everywhere -- like getting off in a zoo except most of the animals aren't in enclosures and the animals are walking around next to you.  Flamingos, peacocks, all kinds of macaws, parrots, and monkeys in the trees.

Next - the port taxi stand - according to the placard, $20 to the old city - we didn't like the thought of a $40 round trip so set off on foot to see if we could do better.  We exited the port and were assailed by more off-site taxi hawkers - the price was still $20 so we kept walking - for about another 50 yards or so until someone agreed to take us into town for $10 - bingo...  The ride into the old city was about 15 minutes - fair amount of traffic on Saturday mid-day.  Weather was low 90's and fairly humid although there was a nice breeze blowing.

The plaza where we exited the taxi was non-descript with a few hawkers looking to provide tours.  But once we entered though the arch way, we entered a truly lovely town - beautifully restored, scrupulously clean for the most part, with greenery and flowers blooming from second story verandas.  We walked from one side of the walled city to the other and then chose several different cross streets to get a feel for things - we like what we felt and saw - churches, schools, shops, restaurants, art filled plazas - bright splashes of color and handsome people walking here and there.

Clean and pedestrian friendly

Beautiful Plaza del Santo Domingo

Local Color...


With a very pleasant spring in our step, we concentrated on finding a souvenir to commemorate out visit.  After deciding on the general idea, we found a beautiful hors devours tray - signed by the artist - that matches our living rooms colors.  The price was reasonable and the proprietor wrapped it securely in bubble wrap for the journey home.  Retracing our steps, we found a taxi back to the ship for $10 immediately -- I think we were smart to hold out for the $10 price tag on the way into town...  Our driver recreated some good Italian driving to get us back to the port - everything but driving on the curb but we felt safe the whole time, interesting how you get used to driving you never see at home except in the movies...

Safely back to port with plenty of time before departure, we enjoyed watching the animals and the birds cavort while Valerie wrote and posted three postcards at the Port store (nice selection, decent prices but better down town) - postcards stamped to get back to the USA were $2 each.

Would you like some?

I am a Chameleon, watch me blend into the furniture

Macaw Extasy

We are the real thing...


Our port call to Cartagena left us wanting more; wishing our port call was long enough to find and eat a good meal -- we'll come back and get that knocked out -- there aren't many cities we've seen that blend 16th century walled cities with a skyline of sky scrapers (on Boca Grande) that look like downtown Miami - the contrast is so interesting and unique. Tomorrow - the Panama Canal - between now and then, we're sailing through 10-14ft seas on our starboard beam -- the stabilizers are doing a great job -- and the third day of the Masters is on ESPN in our stateroom.  Life is sweet...



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