Through the Panama Canal -- Day 4

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Day 4 -- Cartagena, Columbia Sunny 92°

We were still traveling at full speed, and the seas were rough overnight, and I didn't get a ton of sleep. So since I was awake, I got up around 6 to do my walking early. However, all the doors leading to the deck outside were roped off. The whole upper deck was closed due to the high winds. So I hit the gym instead and used a treadmill. After that, I got a small breakfast at Windjammer. Once we were both up and ready for the day, we headed to the main theater to meet our shore excursion group.

They gave us an arrival time of 10:00 am. We decided to get there a few minutes early. Why? Because our last non-DCL cruise that included shore excursions was on the Norwegian Breakaway. On that cruise, we arrived at the meet-up point 10 minutes early only to discover that our group had already left the ship. So to avoid that, we got to the theater 15 minutes early this time. And that turned out to be a mistake; because there were crew members stationed at the entrance who were turning people away until their actually arrival time. So we got shunted into a separate line for the 10:00 people. At 10:00 sharp, they started letting our line into the theater. We walked to the front, got our group stickers and sat with the rest of our group in the theater.

And we sat. And sat. And -- wait for it. . . sat. They finally released our group at 11:20. This was not a good start to our adventure in Cartagena. But, we were on our way on our "Getsemani and Old Town Discovery" excursion. A bus took us into town and then we walked, for about a half hour at a time, to several locations. Getsemani is the poorer area which used to be the center of the slave trade in the city.

Because it was so hot, we stopped at a historic hotel for some refreshments.

Then we were driven to a more middle-class part of town where they pointed out the cultural significance of the door knockers, among other things. The door knocker would tell you what type of work the person did, and how important he was in his industry. The bigger the knocker, the more important the resident. The door could also tell you how many slaves the person owned, depending on the number of decorative rivets in it.

This door belonged to a military officer, based on the lion door knocker. You can also see that he owned at least 10 slaves.

Our last stop was a big town square with a public park and shops, as well as the Gold Museum. This is a museum dedicated to the aboriginal people of the area. They used to bury a person's valuables with him/her when they died. In the first half of the 20th century, as anyone could predict, people began to raid the graves to take all the gold and other valuables. Starting in the 1960s, the government started to re-claim as much of the stolen gold as they could. Much of the recovered artifacts made its way into this museum. It was actually pretty interesting. (And it was air conditioned, which a lot of us appreciated.)

The public park

I really thought that I had pictures of the museum, but I guess I don't. Sorry!

We got back to the ship at 3:40, and headed straight to the pool to cool off. We dipped in the Solarium pool, but only stayed for a half hour or so, because of our early seating time for dinner. We were back in Cascades with our regular serving staff. I haven't mentioned them yet, but they were very good throughout the entire sailing. Alban and Ranjit were terrific for us. Alban was very attentive, and Ranjit brought me 2 Coke Zeros to start every meal without asking.

The service overall was very good. I was definitely impressed with our dining staff and our stateroom attendant. It was a small step below the outstanding service we received on the Celebrity Summit last year, but we were very satisfied throughout the entire 2 weeks.

 

For dinner, the menu had an Italian theme. There was a very average Minestrone soup, an excellent arancini (fried rice balls with cheese in them), and an excellent beef carpaccio. Entrees included lasagna with Béchamel sauce, which was very good, and my chicken parmesan which was not very good. For dessert, Kath got the tiramisu (it was good but didn't need all the whipped cream), I got the miniature lemon merengue pie (excellent), and we shared the chocolate hazelnut cake, which was amazing! With the lone exception of my chicken parm, it was a very good meal.

Beef carpaccio

Anacini

Lasagna

Chicken parm

Tiramisu

Mini lemon merengue pie

And the awesome chocolate hazelnut cake

After two terrible evening shows in a row, we skipped the main show. It was called "Xplosion". It was singing, dancing, drumming, Argentinian bolo, Tango, "and more". It actually sounded interesting, but I just wasn't up for taking the risk again. So instead, we went to the Colony Club and saw the ship's "house band", which was called the High C's Horns. They were made up of a couple trumpets, two saxophones, a trombone, guitar, bass guitar, and drums. They were outstanding. They did a set for about 45 minutes, and it was really, really good. This was probably my favorite show of the whole two weeks.

After the High C's, I popped into the Quill and Compass to see if the guitarist/singer was there, but he must have been done for the night. So I grabbed one last soft-serve and took it back to eat on our balcony.