Gibraltar and Cartagena, Spain

The next morning, we were awakened by a knock on the door to deliver our room service breakfast. The food was nothing special, yogurt, fruit, coffee, and tea, which we had out on the deck watching the ocean pass us by, and our entrance to our first port city. Our port today is Gibraltar, a British Territory off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Gibraltar has been the subject of ongoing argument between England and Spain over who owns it. Spain continues to this day to assert a claim, and England has established it as an important base for the Royal Navy. Both English and Spanish are spoken by most and the relationship remains cordial but somewhat wary. It is famous for the Rock of Gibraltar, a 426 meter high limestone ridge. The ridge has served as a watchtower for the British, the Spanish and the Moors during the Middle Ages. I remember the Rock as part of the 60’s television commercials by Prudential Insurance claiming that to insure your financial security, you needed to have a ‘piece of the Rock’.

Although our ship would berth in Gibraltar with less than a mile easy walk into town, Bob and I were not impressed by any of the cruise tours. Yes, they have the Barbary Macaques, which are the only free-ranging wild monkeys on the European Continent, but we’ve seen a lot of monkeys so we didn’t schedule anything. We had started to assemble a list of things missing and waiting patiently for us in the bowels of the Barcelona Airport, so we decided to walk into town to pick up a few things. We found a pharmacia that had everything we needed, and we headed back to the ship. It was pretty hot!

We decided to further explore the ship, as we have not even half covered all the decks. We chose deck nine, which had several food venues. I immediately liked the process for buffet-type food on this ship. We tend to avoid buffets on ships because they always seem to have the risk of many unclean hands touching the food. The Sun is different. All buffet stations are manned by a staff member behind glass. You point to what you want, and they plate it and serve it to you. Much less risk.

We’ve been sleeping fine, but today the last few days caught up with us—Bob was beat, and I just wanted to stare out into the ocean. But we decided to go to our assigned restaurant, which we hadn’t seen yet and get a light dinner. We headed down to the Eclipse Dining Room. Normally we ask for a table for two, but the hostess offered to sit us at a 6 top with 4 other guests already seated. The two couples at the table were very nice, and we enjoyed each other’s company. Bob had beef stroganoff and I stuck with a salad. We considered going to a comedy show, but just for a minute. Seemed like a good night to sit on the balcony, then head to bed.

Our next day was Cartagena, Spain. We had booked a trolley tour of the city. We kept thinking of the movie, Romancing the Stone, although that was Cartagena in South America, so there were no gators. Cartagena is a historic Roman port city and a major naval base and was founded around 227 BCE. It was one of the last cities to hold out against General Francisco Franco, and became prosperous in the 1950’s. It still has a Roman amphitheater and our trolley promised to shuttle us around the city and to the amphitheater.

The trolley was cute but again we struggled with the temperatures which were in the high 90’s. Spain, as well as all Europe, is suffering from unusually high temperatures, and many people have no AC as they have never really needed it. But we did catch a nice breeze as the trolley moved through the city. The trolley itself is run by electrical power with regenerative braking, meaning that the vehicle uses kinetic motion to convert more electrical power to the vehicle when the brakes are applied. We experienced this as the trolley tried to climb the hill to the view of the amphitheater. It took several complete stops on the steep hill to allow the braking system to feed a bit more power to the engine. This resulted in a start, halt, move just a bit ride. To us it felt a bit like stopping on an icy hill in Pittsburgh and sliding back a bit before the transmission took the vehicle forward. There were several points when we all thought we would have to get out and push.

Upon our return to the ship, we decided to go to the pizza restaurant, Alfredos. This was a great find. We had the Cal Italia, which is a handmade fired pizza with prosciutto, mozzarella, parmigiana, hot honey, green onions, bacon and onions. The crust was crunchy, chewy and perfect, and one was enough to share. We ended the day in the spa hot tub which insured a blissful sleep.