This morning is an even earlier morning than usual. We are meeting our tour at 7:15 outside at the entrance to the port. We are once again with Spain Day Tours, only this time no one says we are with their Cruise Critic group – we’re on our own! We skip the gym this morning, instead just grabbing a quick bite upstairs in the buffet for breakfast, then wandering down to deck 3 to wait for the ship to be released. It’s well after the time they said we’d be in, and still no announcements. Finally, we walk down to deck 2 to check it out, and another couple in front of us goes out. Ok, we’re gone too, thinking we’re #3 an #4 off the ship. Nope, people have been getting off the ship all along and a bunch of our tour group is already standing with out guide. We have no idea why the ship never announced the clearance, but while a lot of us figured it out, a few didn’t and we have to wait a good bit for the rest of our bus group.
Once assembled, Carlos, our guide, takes us to the bus and gets the tour going. Today we are going to Murcia, the capital of the region. We have about a 45 minute drive through farmland in what is termed “the vegetable garden of Europe.” 45-50% of the land here is used for agriculture – and they produce everything from lettuce to artichokes to every type of greens you can think of, along with citrus (lemons, oranges). Quite quickly after leaving the city of Cartegena, the landscape transforms itself into vast fields of every imaginable vegetable – in every imaginable state – from just harvested to just planted, and everything in between. The climate is so good here that they have 3 harvests per year, making for excellent agricultural production.
This is also an area for olive oil production. We get a little bit of intro into what it takes to make olive oil, the different pressings, how the amount pressed out of the olives depends upon when the olives are picked. If picked in November, they are smaller and more tasty, but it takes 7kg of olives for 1 liter of oil. If the olives are picked in December or January, they are bigger but more bitter, but it only takes 5kg of olives for 1 liter of oil. The pressers only use the oil from the olives, but they recycle everything else. The pits are used for fire pellets stoves, the skins for fertilizer on fields. Nothing goes to waste.
Arriving in Murcia, we are dropped off at the City Council building and we begin our education in architecture. I can’t remember the style of this building – its really pretty though with its balconies and columns, but what I do remember is the garden which is gorgeous and is replanted 6 times per year to display the best flowers of the season. Behind the council building is the historic center of the town.We enter through a wide plaza anchored by Saint Mary’s Cathedral and the clock tower. It’s a study in all sorts of architecture, Baroque, Gothic, Renaissance, you name it, because it has been added on to and renovated many times. We walk around the cathedral and luck out in that the doors are open and we can go in for free – normally it costs 4 Euros each, and we could have done that in our free time, but since it is open for free, Carlos takes us in to tour.
The inside is immense, with 23 Chapels from the 17th Century. What we thought were bishops or church hierarchy in the chapels turns out to be entire families. Rich families who purchased the chapels for their burial grounds, and the closer the chapels are to the main chapel, the richer the families were. This now explains why each chapel is designed differently – everyone had their own thoughts about how to show off their chapels. This practice continued into the 18C when King Charles III created cemeteries and forbid any more bones/burials in churches because the remains were decaying and causing yellow fever.
Outside we circle the cathedral, looking at all the ornamentation, including the huge rock chain that is wrapped around the top of the cathedral. It’s totally different and said to have been created in its entirety from one monstrous rock. (I’m not quite sure I’m believing that….it would have had to have been an awfully big rock…but, hey, legends are legends and regardless it is one incredible sculpture.) Completing our circuit around the Cathedral, we end up on Calle Mayor, the main street in the old part of the city, facing the clock tower, which is the second tallest Bell tower in Spain. It was created in 5 sections, the first from the 17C in Renaissance style. It began to lean, so construction stopped until the 18th C when 2 more Gothic sections were added. It was topped off at some point later in what I think was Baroque style. The bells toll the time, but they are also rung for different events and have different melodies for weddings, birthdays, deaths, etc.
We walk down the main street, stopping at a Casino, which we find out isn’t a casino in today’s definition of the word, but more of a private club, similar to a country club. We see casinos all over the place and just assumed they were all gambling places, but apparently not so! They have opened up the lobby just for us, and we get a little peak of the grandeur of the place. The entrance hall is all Moorish style, and Carlos says other rooms have different styles, Turkish, Roman I think. There are all sorts of different rooms, reading, card playing, etc. And just like many country clubs you have to have a sponsor to be considered for membership and the club must vote you in before you can join.
The last stop on our walking tour of the old city is the Theatre Romea, one of the principal theaters in the city. In order to build it, the land was expropriated from church by the ruling government (which didn’t like the church at all). The church and the monks weren’t happy about it, and supposedly at night, to this day, you can hear a monk walking around upstairs. When the land was taken, the monks also prophesized that there would be 3 fires, the last of which will occur when the theater is sold out and it will burn the place to the ground. There have already been 2 fires, and because the management is superstitious, so they never sell out. There are 1179 seats, but they will only sell 1177, always leaving 2 empty chairs behind a pole.
Now we have free time to wander about, so we head back to the square where we will eventually meet, stopping at the model cathedral created for the blind so Sunny can have his fun, then onto a little cafe for some excellent cappuccino and buneullos (basically dense beignets with hard sugar instead of powdered sugar).
At the designated meeting time, we gather together to make a quick trip into the Episcopal palace and associated small church, where we get dirty looks from the parishioners trying to pray inside. Oops! Sorry. Then it’s back on the bus for a drive up into the hillsides to the Fuensanta Monastery
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