Cartagena showed her face as a dirty, noisy, chaotic town where the bus drivers tried to rip us off and the hotel appeared to be in the middle of a building site.
The fact is that arriving anywhere very early in the morning after a freezing sleepless night on a bus doesn't make for the sweetest introductions ... but bus drivers making us pay for a seat for both our bags & our bums didn't start the day well nor did wandering in ever decreasing circles to find the 1960's relic tower block in the middle of an 'improvement' scheme and just metres from the city chaos, that houses our hotel.
But after a complimentary fruit juice, a shower and a snooze we were less grumpy and hit the town to see what all the fuss is about...

... & found that Cartagena is a city of knobs & knockers, brightly painted houses and ancient doorways.
It's quite lovely in a 'I'm here so I might as well see it' kind of way, but I'm not convinced that its worth the effort to get here just to see its sights ... but then its also becoming obvious that I am really less and less of a city person than I even thought I was.
We are here by the Caribbean, dream holiday destination of millions of people world wide and I'd much prefer to be half way up a green grassy mountain in the cloud waiting for the breeze to come on or sat drinking beers in the Roldanillo parque with friends.
Anyway, we enjoyed a nice veggie lunch in a courtyard restaurant and then explored the highlights of the city, which to my mind are the colours, the plants and of course the knockers!

Colombian-Aleman cultural relations

knobs & knockers!

'Sweety's'  house! ;-)

The view from our window
Castillo San Felipe de Barajas