Itchy Feet Adventures: Cartagena

As part of our ‘Find Some Great Places in Murcia’ mission we went to visit the second biggest town in the region, Cartagena. We were very hopeful as Murcia is famous for its lovely beaches and being January we didn’t have to worry about the hordes of tourists in the area.

The town has a very long history as apparently it has been inhabited for more than 2 millennia. It was an important port for the Romans, for the Muslims and later for the Spanish, too. Thanks to this it is supposed to have many lovely monuments and we were ready to soak it all in.

We parked our car then walked down to the port. We got to the sea and just stood there looking out. It was a warm afternoon, we were wearing only a T-shirt. The sun was shining, the water was sparkling and we saw little fish swimming under our feet. We suddenly realised just how much we miss being close to the sea. After Seville we’ll definitely move a bit closer to water.

After having lunch in the sun we walked into the town. Well... I know we have been seeing the best places of Spain but we seriously struggled to find anything worthy of taking a photo of in Cartagena. The centre that consists of a few streets is alright I guess but that includes only the shopping area.

We moved out of the centre streets to find the famous Roman Amphitheater and we were met with the saddest sight ever.The outskirts of the town are gutted out. Many of the buildings are torn down, some of them completely and a few of them with only the façade left intact. I don’t know what happened and why does the town have to look like this but it was a very depressing sight. We had the feeling of looking ‘behind the scenes’. The roads and the few remaining buildings were dirty, unkempt and the streets were derelict. It was such a sad experience.

We finally found the amphitheater which was a huge disappointment as it was almost fully reconstructed. 80% of the stones seemed to be new.