Cartagena
We spent our first full day in Cartagena exploring the old town. The Lonely Planet lists the Palace of inquisition as a top city attraction. So we went to it first.
The museum name suggests that its visitors should expect to see torture equipment and other tools that we are used to associate with the inquisition and I braced myself for viewing these horrible things. However, all items were removed from display in 2015 prior to Pope Francis’ visit to Colombia.
The vast halls of the Palace were almost empty. We walked from one spacious room another where were texts in Spanish only on the walls and practically nothing else. The Palace was a seat of the Spanish Inquisition for 200 years. There must be a lot of history there and a lot to tell but we left the museum having learned nothing about this interesting place. The museum was a disappointment and was not worth the ticket price.
The historic center is surrounded by a stone wall built to protect the city from pirates. Cartagena once was one of the richest cities of the Spanish Empire. The construction of the wall cost a fortune and took 200 years to complete. The walls however did not save the city from the famous pirate, Sir Francis Drake who in 1586 looted Cartagena and occupied it for over a month. He agreed not to ruin the city having received a hefty ransom of 10 million pesos.
The Walled city of Cartagena is rather small. We crisscrossed it in every direction and went to the see the seafront. This is the place where high-rise expensive hotels are. The urban area has its own beaches. We wanted to know if they were suitable for us to swim there.
The city beaches were packed with the locals. Touts quickly spotted us, foreigners and began pestering with offers of their services. We had to turn back.
Between the seafront and the Old Town, there is an interesting monument. It depicts the great-tailed grackle, Cartagena’s official bird. Research shows that grackles are smart and have an amazing ability to adapt to changing conditions.
Zana hotel where we stayed was close to the Old Town, on a quiet side street. When my husband and I went to the Philippines in September 2019, I was very vocal about his choice of the hotels there. This time, he let me find a hotel in Cartagena.
Zana Hotel Boutique had good reviews and was inexpensive. However, the room had no window. Well, technically speaking, there was a window as big as a notebook that opened into the stair landing. Naturally, we kept it closed.
The other interesting feature was hot water that also technically existed but could not be used. A sliding switch on the showerhead was supposed to control the temperature. In fact, it had only two positions – on and off. When the switch was on, the water was scalding hot. If I tried to slide the switch just a tiny bit left, it turned off hot water. Given the choice between being boiled alive and taking a cold shower, I preferred the latter. None of the online reviews said anything about the windows and hot water at the hotel!
The room price did not include breakfast. My husband, knowing that I do not like to run around the city early in the morning in search of a place to eat, paid for breakfast at the hotel. The reviews said that the breakfast area was on the hotel roof and had nice views.
The view was good but breakfast was frugal consisting mostly of a cup of coffee plus a few bits of food that I could swallow all at once. How to trust reviews after that?
These issues of course were of no big importance. Mishaps like these happen all the time when you travel. The main thing was that we were in the beautiful Cartagena having a break from a few months of staying home.
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