March 26, Cartagena Spain

When is Rome, do as the Roman’s do, and when in Cartagena, go visit Roman ruins!! Who would have thought that in the middle of a Spanish town, they would find the remains of a Roman Theater. But, I get ahead of myself.

In 219BC, Hannibal brought his armies to Iberia. This was during the Second Punic War and even though Hannibal was initially victorious, the war ended with his defeat in 202BC. Hasdrubal (his brother-in-law) was commander in Spain from 228 to 221, and established several colonies, most importantly the coastal port of Carthago Nova, now Cartagena.

Dramatically encircled by mountains, Cartagena is now a principal naval base of Spain. The city contains the remains of old walls, a castle constructed in Carthaginian times, and a church that was formerly a 13th Century cathedral.

Our goal was to visit the Roman Theater, the Castillo de la Concepcion, and the Parque de Torres (the original bull fighting ring). On paper, they all were less than a half mile or so away from the dock area. So off we went, across the main avenue, and up two flights of stairs to get up to the level of the main part of town. We turned left so that we would go past the Roman Theater on our way to the Church. While it was obvious that everything was above us, we didn’t realize the number of stairs that we would have to climb in order to get to where we wanted to go. But we trudged on and finally got to the Theater, which is picture that you see above.

Then it was uphill some more where we finally reached the Church, which was at the highest point of the city. We were able to get an even better view of the theater on one side, and on the other the original bull fighting ring. It seemed like no matter where we looked, there were signs of areas being restored from ancient times. It was so nice to see that the city was willing to invest the funds and time to restore the history there.

If you have never been to Cartagena, I highly recommend spending some time in the city, and wearing a good pair of walking shoes, go see the Castillo de la Concepcion, and from the top find the Roman Theater and Parque de Torres. The walk up to the Castillo is beautiful, and surrounded by gardens, trees, and numerous Peacocks walking wild around it. All in all it was a very good day, albeit quite tiring.

Tomorrow we dock in Barcelona and will be there for two days. From our research even that will not be enough days to see everything that Barcelona has to offer. We will most likely do the Hop-on Hop-off bus the first day and try to make our decision as to what major things we want to see the second day.

Until then, Cheers!!