Thursday, October 14, 2010

Cartagena

Cartagena (bottom left is the newly discovered Roman Theatre)


On my first Saturday in Murcia, Erasmus organised an excursion for us students to Cartagena, a city not far from Murcia, about 40kms away. Two coaches full of students. I took a seat in the bus and two girls sat down in front of me. I thought I’d try and make an extra friend or two and introduced myself to the girls. Laura from Australia, Victoria from Latvia and Laura from Argentina, later joined by Annamaria from Italy chatted the whole way to Cartagena. Once there, we were divided up into three groups so that the visits to the sights would be easier to handle. In my group were Laura and Pamela from Argentina, Victoria from Latvia, Luisi, Mercedes, Carlos and Miguel from Mexico, Lili from Germany and a whole bunch of Italians, whom I won’t name because there are too many of them. 


The group


First we walked up to the top of a hill where we had a great view to the entire city. Cartagena is surrounded by hills, but it is also a port which meant we were looking out to sea; a very pretty sight. Our next stop was the Tourist Centre where I didn’t find that half hour allocated to it very useful except for getting a map of the city. 


Cool tree


Next stop the Mairie. Built sometime in the XVI ͭ ͪ century, the Mairie was renovated and hasn’t been open for too long, which made us lucky to be able to see the interior of it.  It was very beautiful with its Roman staircase made of marble and velvet flags draped along the walls. We were led into a room and sat down; a woman introduced herself as our guide. She told us to look up; there were four huge chandeliers and we were told that each of them was made up of 10 million diamonds. 


The town hall
The town hall's chandeliers


A painting we were showed represents the tragedy that occurred sometime in the XIII ͭ ͪ century when a boat capsized and everyone in it drowned. All but one, a dog. Another boat, on seeing the wreckage went to see if there were any survivors. They found only the dog. On nearing Cartagena, the dog jumped overboard and swam all the way to shore, then all the way to his house; he had recognised it from the boat.



Painting depicting the XIIIth century tragedy


Our next stop was Cartagena’s museum, dedicated to the discovery of a Roman Theatre in the middle of the city. It was discovered in only 1991, a fact that I found hard to grasp; I mean, I was alive! Present day history! The Roman Theatre had many layers, from the many centuries. First it was a Roman Theatre then there were layers added by the Arabs, then in the end the Spaniards and finally present day flats were built on top of this site. The museum’s artefacts were bits of pottery from the different ages, so we could compare the cultures and the times. A statue of a man without a head stood tall and we were told that the head used to be sculptured separately so that when the man in question aged, his head could easily be replaced to adapt to the times. 


Beheaded statue
Underground passageway


We were then led underground to a tunnel that led us to the Roman Theatre itself. The city had to make a deal with the people living on top of the site for their houses to be removed in order to discover more of the Roman Theatre. It was very beautiful and very well preserved. There were areas we couldn’t walk in as excavators were still discovering them. There was a passageway at the back of where the audience sat, which was used as protection for civilians when the city was being attacked. 


Roman Theatre
Famous actors that happened to be there at the same time as us


For the rest of the afternoon we had free time. Little groups formed and we made our way through the city to an exhibition ground as there were festivities taking place where we could eat tapas and see all sorts of other food from the region, and artwork too. When we got there the first thing we looked for was food as we were all starving. We found a tapas bar where you could get a beer and a tapas for €1,50. They were making paella, another typical Spanish dish, originally from Valencia. There was a huge wok that they were making it in, for all guests. We got a large portion each, also for a mere €1,50. Me gusta mucho la paella!



Paella yummmmm


We eventually made our way back to the city centre and with my new-found South American friends as well as Victoria, the Latvian girl and Jan, a boy from the Czech Republic, we all sat down by the water and dangled our feet. Let’s not forget the ice-cream! We were to meet the rest of the group at another museum just before 6pm. We visited the museum and then made our way back to the buses which were to take us back to Murcia.



Laci's cute little boat


A day full of nice visits with nice people; I was beginning to be more open to the internationalism of Erasmus and looked forward to seeing my new friends again.



Nice flats

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