We’ve now spent a week in Cartagena and we absolutely love it. The anchorage is protected and even though the water is slightly smelly fish are jumping around the boat with dozens of pelicans plunging noisily down to catch them–so it can’t be too bad. The only nuisance are the taxi boats and private motor boats that heedlessly go through the anchorage at full speed.
The historic town centre is within walking distance of the anchorage and we spent the first few days here sightseeing, feeling like tourists on holidays 
The houses and atmosphere in the centre are surprisingly European–makes you feel like being in Southern Spain. We also feel very safe, there are ridiculously young policemen on mopeds everywhere (most of them wearing dental braces) and coast guard boats patrolling the harbour. The only place where they tried to rip us off twice is the posh supermarket near the marina (charging us 50 euros for a baguette…) 
There’s restaurants and bars everywhere with astounding differences in prices. You can have a fish fillet for 3 or 30 euros…
Cartagena has been a Unesco World Heritage site since 1984, there are forts and museums all over the town, but unfortunately we’ve also discovered some architectural sins from the 70s and 80s as well as half collapsed ruins within the walled city centre, which is astounding, as Cartagena’s economy obviously relies on tourism. We visited the Naval Museum which gives an overview of the historic development of the city and its dozens of fortifications that have been added since its foundation in 1533.
The last 3 days were quite rainy, so we stayed at home, finished a rain-catching/shadow canvas for the foredeck and since the sewing machine was already out I also turned some unpractical shirts with long sleeves into comfy short sleeve shirts. Back in Austria it would have never ocurred to me buying a sewing machine, but living on the boat we use our indestructible Pfaff quite often
