November 27 - Cartagena Spain

The boat is taking on a festive look.  The main foyer is now decorated for Christmas complete with wreathes and Christmas trees.  It looks a lot better than their selection of modern art that they have on the staircases.  On our floor it is a persevered Dandelion.

Tonight we joined the glamorous life of show business.  We went to the Constellation theatre to see Johnny Balance, a magician from Australia.  He was very good at sleight of hand card tricks.  For many of his tricks he required members of the audience to assist him.   For his first trick he asked Marg and myself to join him on stage.  When we got up there he took Marg aside and had her give him 10 cards.  While she was doing this he had me shaking my booty on stage.  As everyone knows, I can’t dance so I’m praying that no one took a video and is putting it up on the Internet.  He then gave the cards back to Marg and had me give him 10 cards.  He then made a big production of magically moving three cards from Marg’s deck to mine.  We then counted our cards, Marg had seven cards and I had thirteen cards.   Of course my dancing acted as the distraction that allowed him to palm three cards from the cards Marg had given him and when he returned the cards that I had given him, he just added the palmed cards to my deck without me noticing.  Many of the other tricks were very good as ours was just the opening trick.

The bad weather has followed us to Cartagena Spain.  The farmers can thank us as we brought the first measurable rain to the region in seven months.  I guess this is better than the heavy snow that has blanketed Port Stanley,

Cartagena is a city of 100,000 residents and is a sea port on the south eastern coast of Spain. It was settled by the Carthaginians 2000 years ago.  It was noted for mineral deposits such as silver and lead.  Unfortunately the area is now mined out and the mines have all closed. 

There is a tourist area close by that was developed by the British and it is now a leading golf resort in Europe. 

The town centre and main shopping area are quaint but other than that the rest of attractions are lame.  There is an old Roman theatre and a medieval fort that people have told us are nothing to write home about.

We went on a tour called Handicrafts and Wine cellars.  We thought it would be trip to a pottery factory and an elegant vineyard with an old wine cellar.  It turned out to be a trip to large retail pottery store outside of Cartagena, followed by a trip to a small vineyard housed in a large converted garage.  It wasn’t a complete waste of time as we learnt how they make sparkling wine.  We had never seen that before.

More photos from Cartagena

I’m hearing from many people that the onboard Internet service is worst than pathetic.   Because the connection is over a satellite uplink, the speed is about 1/1000 of the normal household connection.  It is good for sending text only emails and not much else.  On days when the seas are rough the satellite uplink has been very inconsistent.