Our penultimate port stop finds us in the Spanish town of Cartagena. From here, it is possible to visit Murcia but we decided just to have a wander around the town as it aparently has lots of Roman ruins and interesting architecture.

We think MIL is tired of us walking her legs off in port as she decided just to go shopping leaving us to explore on our own.

First stop was the remains of the Roman ampitheatre which is very much a ruin. Work is being done to preserve it but it still looks quite impressive.

Next to the ampitheatre is a panoramic lift to take visitors up to a castle at the top of a hill. The cost is €2pp just for the lift or €12 fir entrance to the castle, the Roman theatre and either the civil war museum or the air raid shelter museum. We chose the  €12 option as we wanted to visit the Roman theatre as well.

The castle itself is really more of a tower but it is worth the visit for the panoramic views over the town. There is also a museum about the history of Cartagena inside it but we sort of rushed through that as we were more interested in getting to the Roman theatre.

Amazingly, the theatre was only discovered in 1987 as it had been built over and covered up for centuries. They’ve done a really good job of excavating and restoring it to show the scale of the structure and how impressive it would have been in it’s time whilst still showing the ancient ruins.

After this it was time for lunch and we headed to a tapas bar which I’d found recommended online. According to the reviews, it was very much a ‘locals’ place with an absence of tourists. So I was a bit disappointed to find a coach load of people from our cruise there, although it turns out they were on a tapas tour so it wasn’t such a bad thing. Anyway, we ordered a range of dishes and had a couple of beers each and only paid €29 which we thought was really good value as the food was delicious and the beer was good.

A leisurely stroll back to the ship followed and we headed for the pool deck for a much needed dip in the pool as it had been extremely humid in port.

Pre-dinner drinks found us in The Glass House, the on board wine bar where they have a wide array of wines by the glass. Here I tried one of their wine flights which, at £9.95 for 3x 100ml servings, I thought was a good value way of trying some different wines.

Dinner this evening was again in the MDR where I enjoyed Pate, Blackened Sea Bream with Dirty Rice and a Black-Eyed Bean Salsa following by a very rich and tasty Vanilla and Saffron Scented Pear Tart with a pastry case that was incredibly crisp.

After dinner, MIL retired to bed to continue reading her book whilst Mr FFF and I went to one of the lounges for  a couple more drinks before turning in.

Tomorrow is our last port stop and we’re kind of almost home as we’ll be in Gibraltar.

Thanks for reading,

FFF