Since you all get to hear about our sleeping habits in this blog, I woke up at 8:15am! I’m trying really hard to get adjusted to the different cultural timing here. Todd and I showered and dressed for our morning coffee and croissants. Todd decided that today’s cappuccino was the best so far on the trip.
And it came with the tiniest croissant! This coffee shop was delicious and the fresh orange juice was amazing. The kids rolled over around 11am and we picked up their breakfast tab š Breakfast for all of us with five coffees, four pastries, two empanadas, and two fresh ojs was $26. I will say, some of us are rather tired of croissants and empanadas…but alas, it’s all we seem to find here. The workers were gracious with my google translate Spanish. As this is a much smaller town, very few people have spoken English.
After grabbing our waters and sweaters for the day, we headed out in the direction of the water. We found an elevator that took us up to a castle, which seemed like the best way to enter a castle on a hill. Castillo de la Concepcion. General Cartagena is who this area is named after. There are many walls and old ruins that show the age of this city, but this modern contraption is what brought us up immediately- albeit with some shaky and nervous legs.
The panoramic views were amazing and the warm sun led to all of us shedding layers before entering inside the museum filled with lots of armor.
We also learned that during the Inquisition, the Jewish people in the area were expelled due to their reluctance to convert to Catholicism. They had been in this region for generations.
Up next was the marina and a walk toward the harbor. We found an awesome restaurant Cerveceria de Levante which had an awesome indoor outdoor space that allowed us to sit down and play cards for a bit…with a pitcher of sangria of course!
That first bottle of wine was a moscato and it was waaaay too sweet. The sangria was a much better taste and left all of us with smiles. The food was amazing and it was very nice to have white rice. Just plain white rice with salmon. Eating tourist food for two weeks can be hard on your stomach. Finding good salads can be challenging. And funny story, fish and chips were ordered, salmon and rice was brought to the table. It was a happy accident because Katie loves salmon and rice so we just ordered the fish and chips again.
A short game of Phase 10 and lots of eating later, we were ready for siestas…starting to understand the culture! As we walked back to the hotel, we saw a few signs that made our eyebrows peek and some that made us smile and laugh.
I did take a siesta today. About an hour and it was lovely. I woke up and read about how Spain has been in the “wrong time zone” since WWII and how that has led to their different eating times i.e. dinner at 10pm. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170504-the-strange-reason-spaniards-eat-late
So after reading that, and discovering that 60% of the population NEVER naps during siesta, it seems like maybe the country is holding onto something out of habit instead of reason. Apparently the tourist lobby is quite strong here. The strongest argument is that in the summer during the peek of tourism, the sun sets at nearly 10pm allowing more daylight for tourists. Or, they could all get up early like we do every day. Regardless, we are going to need to synchronize watches with our friends meeting us from Portugal in a few days.
And at 7pm, we went out! We saw the lights of Christmas and walked around the shops. We got waffles for dinner and enjoyed some shopping. The weather was lovely and perhaps the best part of visiting in December. Oh, it’s January already. Well, you get what I mean.
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