Cartagena de Indias - Beautiful city !!!

We're at Club Nautico in Cartagena de Indias. Everybody is still sleeping and recovering from the heavy night. I'm enjoying the city that slowly awakes. It's exiting to be surrounded by so much history and a new culture to explore. 

Every one of these white birds have a mooring line for themselves. Funny to see how they fight for it!

 

These little birds are very good fishermen! They catch a lot of them and love to leave just the head all over LouiseAnna 😖 Louise and Anna are sad that these small fish lost their friends. I explain that birds also need to eat. Anna wittily replies: "but they have enough bread!".

 

   And then the grandparents arrive from Belgium, through Madrid and Bogota. Quite a long way and with an extra suitcase of "stuff"! But we're all very happy to see them again on LouiseAnna 😌

A beautiful gift from my mother in-law.  

For the first day of visits, we head for the old city centre. 

View over Club Nautico. It's hot, but there's a nice strong wind!

They're so happy to be able to run around again!

 
Inside the city walls, there's a plentitude of colours, amazing buildings while strolling around small streets.

 A street named after my dad 😍

Muelle de Los Pagasos with everything a flamboyant city asks for: dance groups, Jehova's witnesses, street artists, plain beggars 😳 From the latter there are a lot and by now the girls are so used to it, that when a woman asks to take a picture with them, they said: "One dollar please" 😱😂😳

Many many churches. They are really impressive here!

  

Geoffrey also enjoys himself 😂

 

 After 4 hours we haven't seen half of it, but it's time to get some air. So we get up the city walls and look for a bar, because ... we earned it 😎

A bar with a nice view, great sunset, but difficult to capture on picture. Or we're just not so good at it 😇

Two generations of paparazzi 😅😍

While we return to the boat, night falls and the city becomes even more enchanting!

 

So enchanting that Geoffrey and I return the second night. It's been a long time we had a night out on our own!!! And it happened to be a special evening as it was the Columbian film festival over Muelle Los Pegasos 😁

So first a very nice dinner of tapas on Calle 25.

Second, hup to the rhum bar on Calle 24! 
Columbia has great rhum! Less strong than French rhum but very subtile taste!
And third, some salsa 😃😍 There all private clubs. This one seemed to be more decent 😏 and had a great live music and dance show.

The area around Club Nautico marina is also quite nice. 

 
We found a very cheap and delicious restaurant (Narcobollo) where the most we payed was 18 dollars for 6 people!!! It's kind of self-service, no alcohol and for locals of all working classes.

And a playground for the girls. What more do you need? Hmmmmm a ... beer 😳

Geoffrey took the picture too early, but I was showing how good it was 😏
In the afternoon we went to Castillo de San Felipe. An architectural castle so strange that we could only wonder about who the architect was in real life 😉  

Wonderful view over the bay.

And the 4th day we had a look at the Monasterio del Popo. Especially beautiful for the view and the contrast in noice! You hear different music from everywhere and lots of Spanish "blabla" out of so many different houses! They speak a lot and very very fast! 😆

Our agent Maria wanted a picture for her new company website. She has made our life in Columbia so easy! We didn't have to get off the boat once to deal with immigration, clearance, cruising permits, ... Thanks Maria!

We have to leave Columbia, but we're not sad as new plans have been made to come back and visit the country by plane and car. It's too beautiful, people are too nice, food is too great and the culture and nature too magnificent not to explore this country further!