After three flights and an over night kip on an airport bench and Alex and I arrive in Cartagena on Colombia's Caribbean coast for a couple of weeks of sun before returning to rainy England. Cartagena (pronounced 'Carta-hey-na') is probably the most beautiful town I have ever been to. I don't do anything while I'm there - just wonder around the cobbled streets of the old town, salsa music playing from the shuttered windows of the pastel coloured colonial mansions, bourganvillia trailing from their balconies.
In the mornings we get breakfast (fresh passionfruit juice and amazing coffee) from an open fronted cafe, watching the vendors push their wagons of exotic fruit up and down the street and the old men sitting on their door steps smoking and chatting.
Before it gets to hot we go for a walk: past street art, men playing chess in the plaza and flamoyantly dressed women selling fruit. All of this in the shade of hundreds of beautiful buildings - churches, mansions, museums, clock towers, castles and just 'ordinary' houses with families sitting on their steps watching the world go by. By around 13:00 it is hot and we relax in a leafy plaza with a fresh lemonade, water from the fountains splashing and cooling our faces and wild parakeets in the trees.
In the evenings we have a cocktail at one of the bars on the top of the city walls, overlooking the Caribbean sea. At last I'm in a place where it doesn't turn freezing the moment the sun goes down and there is a warm, salty breeze off the eater. After the sun sets the streets fill with musicians, jugglers, mimes and panama hat sellers. They move out of the street only when a horse-drawn carriage trundles past carrying diners in their finest clothes (linen suits for the men and a lot of gold jewellery for the women) to the numerous pavement cafes where they eat at immaculate tables while next door a man sells beers from a cool box.
When the christmas lights are turned on all this is amplified. There are more people on the streets and their clothes are more extravagant. The music is louder and every building is lit with lights - from the two up two down houses along a tiny alley to the dome of the cathedral.
In the mornings we get breakfast (fresh passionfruit juice and amazing coffee) from an open fronted cafe, watching the vendors push their wagons of exotic fruit up and down the street and the old men sitting on their door steps smoking and chatting.
Before it gets to hot we go for a walk: past street art, men playing chess in the plaza and flamoyantly dressed women selling fruit. All of this in the shade of hundreds of beautiful buildings - churches, mansions, museums, clock towers, castles and just 'ordinary' houses with families sitting on their steps watching the world go by. By around 13:00 it is hot and we relax in a leafy plaza with a fresh lemonade, water from the fountains splashing and cooling our faces and wild parakeets in the trees.
In the evenings we have a cocktail at one of the bars on the top of the city walls, overlooking the Caribbean sea. At last I'm in a place where it doesn't turn freezing the moment the sun goes down and there is a warm, salty breeze off the eater. After the sun sets the streets fill with musicians, jugglers, mimes and panama hat sellers. They move out of the street only when a horse-drawn carriage trundles past carrying diners in their finest clothes (linen suits for the men and a lot of gold jewellery for the women) to the numerous pavement cafes where they eat at immaculate tables while next door a man sells beers from a cool box.
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