Celebrity Infinity - Cartagena - Alicante - València

Cartagena - Spain

This port was added to our itinerary when Porto in Portugal fell through a few days ago. We'll be coming back here next week on the NCL Prima.

A beautiful view of the sun rising greeted me when I opened the curtain this morning.

And a fun surprise awaited us as we pulled into the harbor – the Oceania Marina! I sent a What's App message to Churchill, our amazing butler, to see if he was still on Marina. He was and it was so fun to connect up with him again. This time as friends, not customers :)

Seeing the Marina brought back so many great memories of that 26 day cruise. That was an amazing experience – hopefully to be repeated in the future.

We walked around the port then up to a Roman amphitheater that's been partially restored.

We had lunch at Saona.

Got another picture of a couple kissing! This one was accidental. I was actually taking a picture of the fellow walking around bare-chested with his substantial tattoos. When I saw the picture tonight while editing I noticed the couple haha. I've gotten relatively a lot of couples kissing the last week or two.

Mitzi noticed the fellow leaning out the window of his boat. Great picture, Mitzi!

As we walked back to the port we had Marina on the left, and Infinity on the right.

Mitzi finished another segment of her new Alice in Wonderland quilt – the key.

Alicante

We ordered room service last night late because we hadn't had dinner. I was too tired to go back and include the picture for yesterday so here it is today :)

We found Alicante quiet. The cathedral was closed. We didn't want to hike up to the top of the mountain where the castle is.

We walked around town, found a sweet shop, bought a variety of things to sample, and sat in a window for a while trying them out.

Mitz was excited to try the black licorice, however as you can tell from her expression, it was underwhelming. They just don't make black licorice here like they do in Iceland!

Sunset was nice as we sailed away.

We had dinner at the Luminae. I had to get the lamb and the hen.

Mitzi's pasta was the best we've had on this ship, excellent.

Snapped an out of focus picture of Ricky. He's a junior server, just started working in the Luminae a few weeks ago and is learning the ropes. He always has a big smile and greets us by name.

Valenthia (I mean València)

I can't pronounce the 'th' with a straight face!

This post has five types of photos to group together.

Group 1: Street Photography. People interacting, grabbing butts, pulling up dresses to get sun on the legs, playing, looking up at the architecture, walking with a lollipop in the mouth. I find humans fascinating.

Having been to so many cathedrals over the last few months I had an interesting insight today. These building represent two extremes: beauty and gore.

I've been focusing on the beauty of these buildings. They are incredible.

They build these beautiful structures that are so elevating, so amazing, the most beautiful things humans are capable of building.

And then inside them they are filled with death and gore and ugly and the worst things humans are capable of doing.

The gore and violence creates an uncomfortable feeling inside me. I've tended to overlook it and not give it space in my observations.

Today I decided to intentionally focus on it.

To illustrate these extremes, here is the beautiful side of the Valencia Cathedral followed by the ugly side.

Group 2: Beauty.

Group 3: Gore.

Group 4: We waited in line for some ice cream. As people got their ice cream I found it interesting to see their expressions and behavior. So here are photos of people with ice cream.

Clearly my choice of the opposing flavors of vanilla and chocolate was subconsciously influenced by the opposing influence of beauty and gore in the cathedral.

Group 5: Our 'normal' pictures :)

The water in the harbor this morning was completely still. This is the stillest water I've seen in the 3.7 months we've been traveling.

We hopped on a bus to go from our ship into the Valencia city center. We had the whole bus to ourselves! A private chauffeur experience in a huge diesel bus haha.

"Confess ya sins, sinna!" Another confessional haha

We had lunch at La Calita. Burrata is something we've come to love, having first experienced it on our first day in France.

At the ice cream shop Mitzi got a croissant with ice cream and whipped cream. I think she was very happy :)

Mitzi bought a scarf.

And even though the Retreat red carpet never has any utility, I had to walk across it on our way to the ship. Hilarious! I don't know why they keep putting it out. It literally has no utility at all.

Sadly this concludes our 2nd to last cruise. We've had another wonderful time together. This way of travel and experiencing the world suits us really well.

We go back to Barcelona tomorrow for two days, then embark on our last cruise that will take us transatlantic from Barcelona to New York.

It's been a wonderful experience traipsing around western Europe for the last couple months.