Cartagena, Day 4

I wanted to check out a market north of our hotel so we made our way up and, en route, passed by the local Sofitel where, apparently, a number of important dignitaries were staying.  There was a commotion among there security detail as some of them left the hotel.  We hadn’t yet seen Bocagrande, which is where the main stretch of beach was so we headed over there in the morning.  The beach didn’t look particularly enticing though I took these shots from the second floor of a mall overlooking the beach.

We stopped off at a bar specializing in beers for a quick drink and then ambled over to a nearby restaurant for lunch.  I ordered a local specialty–fried fish with coconut rice, which was pretty tasty.  We walked around for a little more and then headed back to our hotel to escape the heat.  An unpleasant surprise awaited in my e-mail inbox–notification that I was considered a no-show for a hotel that I had previously booked and forgotten to cancel and I spent the next hour calling Booking.com and walking over to the hotel asking them for leniency in the penalty charges.  We headed back out and went to Caragena’s modern art museum and saw another biennial installation at the Maritime museum.

Building photographed from Maritime museum

I wanted to check out a few stores in Cartagena and came across a few nice stores on this street.

We stopped off at an eatery we had passed by on our first day and decided to try their sancocho and ajiaco–quite tasty and they came with all these sides, including avocado and, for Adam, a side salad which was delish.  We decided to head back to our hotel to digest and when we headed back out to find a place for dinner, the proprietor mentioned that the Australian couple was in their room so we stopped off to say hello.  They hadn’t eaten dinner either so we agreed to get dinner together and walked around to find a place.  The first area we walked to didn’t have any promising restaurants so we ended up going back to El Boliche.  More shared stories of travel, which unite all adventurous spirits.