A milestone today. I have two travel ambitions. To visit 100 countries and to visit 50 Hard Rock Cafes. Colombia is my 100th country.

Barbara, Rob, Linda and I went on a walking tour of Cartagena Old Town. Our first stop was at the San Felipe Fort, built by slaves for the Spanish in the 16th century. Then we drove onto Cartagena Old Town and walked!

The old town is a maze of small streets with narrow roads, multi-coloured buildings, many with mahogany balconies covered in flowers and plazas. We strolled about for an hour or so, walking past and into
some of the buildings. We also went, briefly, onto the city walls. They surround the city and are 12 kilometres long. It really is a nice place and so worth a visit.

Linda decided to return to the ship, but the rest of us hit the Hard Rock Cafe (my 35th HRC) for a couple of beers and fajitas. We then ambled back to the city walls, found a taxi and travelled back to the port. There was a real surprise at the port. We had to walk through a kind of menagerie. There were parrots, lots of the noisy blighters, peacocks, monkeys, an anteater and more. On the other side of the animals was an area with a shop and a cafe/bar. So we stopped and had a couple more of the local brew before returning to the ship.

It was a hot, sticky and very enjoyable day ashore.

We were moored next to the Marella Discovery 2, the old Legend of the Seas. I hadn’t realised she had already been converted to a Marella ship. She left about a hour before us.

We both managed to get our laundry done before dinner.

As we had eaten a large lunch, Barbara and I decided to forego dinner in the MDR and eat in the Horizon buffet instead. It was OK. As we finished earlier than expected, we decided to go to the early rather than late show in the Curzon Theatre. It was a ventriloquist from BC called Don Bryan. He was better than I expected even if I did have to stand through the show.

We went straight to the 21:30 quiz on food and drink. Gobsmackingly, we scored 20/20 and no tie-break, which meant we won a bottle of wine. Rose, this time. On my way to the Syndicate Quiz, I noticed that the roof over the Crystal Pool has been closed. Interesting, as we’re in the Caribbean. Oh how are the mighty fallen. We were abysmal. We didn’t score anything until the fifth question and ended up with 12/20. The winners scored 15/20.