Walking Tour - Cartagena old town, Colombia

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First stop in Colombia, beautiful Cartagena!

Cartagena, our first stop in Colombia! We loved doing free walking tours when we were in Europe and were delighted to find these tours to be available again in South America! 

Accomodation

We stayed just outside the old town walls which was a fantastic. It is significantly cheaper than staying within the walls. A lot of backpackers stay in Gesemini but again, we didn´t find great private room options there and dorm beds were very expensive in comparison. 

Free Tour Cartagena

We booked to go with ¨Free Tour Cartagena¨which comes highly recommended by other bloggers. I found the tour guide to be very knowledgable and friendly. However, the group had about 40 people which made it difficult for us to hear everything the guide had to say along the way. It was also difficult to ask questions. The tour started with a time wasting exercise of the guide asking for everyone´s names, where we are all from and with him guessing all the capitals of our countries. I found this to be a huge waste of time. The tour lasted 2 hours which was a good length of time given how incredibly hot it was in Cartagena. 

Walking Tour of Old Town

Teatro Adolfo Mejia: built by the same architect who also designed the clocktower. 

Streets of Cartagena

Door knockers signify the status of the occupants. This is an iguana which means occupants are of royal birth. 

Cartagena walls

Statue of St Peter Claver

Sculptures titled ¨daily life¨ by Edgardo Carmona 

Sculpture of a Palenquera woman. Palenquera ladies walk around Cartagena with colourful outfits and fruit baskets, you are not allowed to take a photo of them without permission and payment (in the other order it seems), so we all took photos here because it´s free.

Cartagena clock tower built in 1911, the clock no longer works.

Famous hallway full of traditional sweets across the square from the clock tower.

Miss Colombia finalists, a passerby could not resist pointing to all the ladies and talking to me in rapid spanish, that´s why there is a stick in my photo.

Location: Cartagena, Bolívar, Colombia

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