December 25, 2023 Merry Christmas

 Merry Christmas in Cartagena Columbia 

We arrived early this morning. It is a short layover, so we are up early to eat a breakfast before we catch our excursion. We are off for a panoramic Cartagena tour. First stop Castillo San Felipe, a fort from the 1700. It has 7 miles of walls still standing in the old and new town proper.

You will notice we are wearing our cooling cloths. They worked amazing, and were worth packing. Today it is 88 degrees and high humidity. I also brought along an umbrella, Incase of rain, but also for shade.

Next stop, after driving through town was shopping.

It was a more pleasant experience than Cozumel. It was cleaner, better souvenirs, and Mike even bartered for a couple of items.

Overall the city is more prosperous, you still see trash everywhere, and a few people sleeping in the street. We were told that they had a new president elected 1 year ago and unemployment has dropped to 10%.

The pictures don't show it, but the Ocean is higher than the road we were traveling on.

Back to the port, and we had a bit of a walk back to our ship. Not a bad walk, as we walked through their 

I borrowed these pictures from someone on the cruise. Their pictures were better than mine. It was a pleasant walk, and they had a great variety of birds. There was also an air conditioned souvenir shop we walked through before we started out to walk, less than a half mile to our ship. Fun morning.

Following our lunch I swam and Mike and I laid out to catch the rays. We were able to experience our ship leaving Cartagena. I saw a statue in the middle of the bay that I was able to catch a shot of it.

I thought this was fitting as it is Christmas, and this is Mary and baby Jesus.

I had made dinner reservations at our Italian restaurant. It was a 5 course meal that we made into a 4 course meal. We had plenty to eat. We skipped the appetizer, had soup, pasta, entree, and dessert. Sorry I kept eating the food before I remembered to take a picture. With that said, I got a picture of their Christmas dessert, a milk chocolate mousse on top of fruit cake, with something raspberry over all and cherry center.

We were dressed up for the occasion.

 When you are dressed for the evening you celebrate, so we went to a Holiday musical presentation by all our musical talent who have been playing for us. The music was beautiful, and what I have been expecting, Christmas music.

It has been a Merry Viking Sky Christmas for us. I hope you are finding a way to celebrate. We miss being with our family back home. Tomorrow we will be going through the Panama Canal.