Sunday, March 12, 2023: Cartagena (Author: J)
Our second full day in Cartagena began much like the first. Once we were dressed and ready for our day, we headed downstairs for breakfast. The breakfast buffet was largely unchanged, although there were some different desserts offered. Yes, Hotel Bantu offers dessert for breakfast. This was a highlight for P. He often claims he is not hungry at breakfast, but the availability of chocolate options ensured that he found room for a little something each day in Cartagena.
After breakfast, we headed for our favorite destination in Cartagena, the Exito supermarket. Wild About Colombia had suggested that we bring enough cash to pay for our meals at our next two hotels, which meant we needed to make multiple trips to the ATM. Pro tip: before going to an ATM in a foreign country, explain to your child that he should not loudly ask how much money you have taken out – at least not until you make it back to your hotel. Fortunately, if there were muggers or pickpockets at Exito, they were inattentive. We made it safely back to Hotel Bantu to stash our funds.
I then used the Cabify app to call a taxi. Cabify works much like Uber or Lyft in the US. You tell the app where you want to go, and it finds you a ride and gives you the information for the driver. Unlike Uber or Lyft, Cabify only calls taxis and it gives you the option to pay cash or card. It would have been easy enough to hail a taxi on the street, but I liked the security of knowing the price of our ride in advance. (The most consistent scam we have encountered while traveling, including in the US, is a taxi driver who overcharges either by intentionally taking the long way or tacking on extra charges once you reach your destination). Taxi apps also eliminate any concerns that might arise from a language barrier.
It wasn’t long before our driver arrived, and we were on our way to Castillo San Felipe. Castillo San Felipe is a colonial era fort built on a hill outside the walls of the old city. Although we did not plan it intentionally, seeing the fort after visiting the Naval Museum turned out to be a good choice. The museum had exhibits about the fort and its role in the defense of the city that provided great context for our trip to the fort.
(Photo: making our way up Castillo San Felipe)
In fewer than fifteen minutes, we were at the entrance to the fort. We found the ticket booth and I successfully ordered our tickets in Spanish. Then, the clerk asked me for “su nombre.” I stared at her blankly, not because I didn’t understand, but because I could not fathom any reason why she would need to know my name. “Your name?” she repeated in careful and what seemed like slightly irritated English. This time, I responded. It turns out that the ticketing system uses names rather than paper tickets. The names are entered at the ticket booth and pop up on a tablet at the turnstile. If I were trying to turn this into a lesson for my students, I suppose it would be to have confidence in your own knowledge and preparation. But the odds of me taking my own advice are slim; you are much more likely to find me staring slack-jawed at a ticket clerk than you are to find me confidently responding in Spanish to the question I thought I heard.
(Photo: views from the fort)
(Photo: canon recovered from the ocean)
All visits to Castillo San Felipe start with a steep uphill walk. We were there on a beautiful, sunny day, which meant that our walk was hot. Some of us may have whined. But we made it and spent an enjoyable hour or so exploring the fort. P’s favorite part was poking around in the tunnels. At one time, the tunnel system under the fort allowed soldiers to travel all the way down to the harbor – a handy trick if you need to plant explosives under an advancing enemy. Portions of the tunnels are still open, allowing visitors to enter a door in one area of the fort and pop out elsewhere. We ended our time at the fort with an obligatory photo near the Colombian flag.
(Photo: the shot that everyone on instagram takes)
We exited the fort to find a line of waiting taxis. This made Cabify impractical, so we settled for confirming the trip price up front. Our next destination was Plaza San Pedro Claver, where we took some photos before visiting the Modern Art Museum. The Modern Art Museum is a small museum located in a historic customs house. As the name suggests, the museum features modern art. Note that the museum is cash only and it is not air conditioned — although it is as airy as a non-climate-controlled building can be.
There were a large number of pieces from the 50s and 60s, along with some more recent art. A significant percentage of the paintings and installations involved pigeons. I was very excited because pigeon is one of approximately 3 Spanish words that I learned through a dedicated regimen of watching Jorge el Curioso on Hulu in the weeks leading up to our trip. (I started watching the show after watching a YouTube video that suggested watching Spanish language TV without subtitles to help improve pronunciation).
(Photo: inside the art museum)
After spending time with the arty pigeons, we headed back into the plaza where we walked past many living, breathing pigeons on our way to Crepes & Waffles. Our taxi driver had been very excited about this restaurant, so we decided to put his recommendation to the test. Crepes & Waffles serves crepes and waffles. We were there for Sunday brunch, so there wasn’t much else on the menu. D and I ordered crepes. P ordered waffles. Then we waited a long, long time. Finally, the crepes came out, but there was still no sign of the waffles. There was also no sign of any of the waitstaff, complicating our ability to track down the missing waffles. I decided to set out in search of my son’s meal. I finally located the waffles sitting alone on a counter. They had become separated from the crepes and subsequently abandoned by the waitstaff. I flagged down a server and had the now cold waffles delivered. Then I went back to the table to eat my cold crepe.
All in all, this was an unsatisfying dining experience. We decided that the remedy was more ice cream. Because of the poor service at Crepes & Waffles, we walked past their ice cream case and headed back to Amore Mio. The staff there recognized us and welcomed us back for our second and final afternoon gelato.
We then walked the short distance back to Hotel Bantu for our customary afternoon swim. After spending some time in the rooftop pool, P and I decided to check out the pool on the first floor in the hopes that it had a hot tub filled with hot water. There weren’t any clean towels at the rooftop pool. This meant that we had to walk through the lobby dripping wet. We were almost to the pool when a hotel employee intercepted us to point out that there was a staircase closer to our room. I tried to explain that we weren’t coming from our room, but rather heading from one pool to the other. And the upstairs pool had no towels.
Thinking that we had reached an understanding, P and I proceeded to the downstairs pool. It did not have a hot tub, but it did have plenty of towels. Minutes later, a different hotel employee arrived at the downstairs pool with a pile of towels. This led to a conversation in broken Spanish (me) and broken English (hotel employee) in which I tried to explain that it was the upstairs pool that needed towels and the employee tried to confirm that I understood what a towel was. After all, from his perspective, I had asked for more towels while apparently surrounded by them. We ultimately reached agreement on what a towel was; the employee left with the same towels he had arrived with and a newfound concern for my sanity. P and I then took all the towels from the downstairs pool and carried them upstairs.
After our swim, we got cleaned up and ready for our final dinner in Cartagena. Because we were ready early, we decided to take a walk around the historic center and do some shopping. Our hope was to find an extra shirt for P (because I had counted incorrectly and told him to pack the wrong number of shirts) and a souvenir or two. Our shopping expedition was a partial success. We found a woven ball in one of the higher end shops that will make a serviceable Christmas ornament. But we did not find any open shops selling children’s clothing. Even after making yet another stop at Exito, which has clothing on the 2nd floor, P did not find anything he was happy with. (The problem with the clothing at Exito was that it all said “New York” or “California” and P was not about to buy a shirt in Colombia that had a logo for a US city).
That evening’s reservation was at Montmartre, a French restaurant conveniently located just around the corner from our hotel. What an adorable place! The small, second floor dining room is decorated to look like a rustic, French farmhouse complete with a little cat sculpture in the rafters. On the night that we ate at Montmartre, the server had called out so the owner was single-handedly filling all of the front-of-the-house roles. Other than a slight delay in taking our dessert order, the impact of this short staffing was not noticeable.
(Photo: croquettes)
We had the portabella croquettes, the C’est Cheese (a pastry wrapped Camembert) as appetizers, the squash tortelli and the salmon wellington as mains, and the crème brulee and all choco (a chocolate brownie sundae) for dessert. The only bad thing about dining with D and P is that I never get to pick my top choice dessert as I am always outvoted 2 to 1 in favor of some variation on chocolate cake and ice cream. Still, this was a very pleasant meal. After dinner, we made the short walk back to our hotel where we handled the unpleasant task of packing. While I could have happily spent more time in Cartagena, the beach was calling.
Travel Monkeys 