This article was written by Cam with help from Meg and Claude AI. All photos are ours.

A previous post covers Part I of this cruise, the departure and visits to Seville, Cadiz, Gibraltar and Malaga.

Overnight, the ship sailed from Malaga to Cartagena. This is one of the things we love about cruising. You go to bed and wake up in a new port. Explore all day, then come back, rest a bit and eat dinner. There are shows and performances in the evening as the ship departs. Then off to bed. Rinse and repeat. No days spent travelling from A to B. It works for us, your milage may vary.

Off to Cartagena Spain

There are Roman ruins and then there are Roman ruins. Cartagena belongs firmly in the second category. The kind that stops you mid-step and recalibrates your sense of what old actually means. The Roman theatre, built in the first century BC and capable of seating thousands, is dramatic in the way that only genuinely intact things can be. This is not a field of suggestive rubble requiring interpretive signage and a generous imagination. The semicircle of stone seating rises in tiers as it always did, the stage area below it still readable as a stage. The whole structure sitting in the middle of a modern Spanish city with the quiet authority of something that has simply outlasted every argument for its removal. 

We moved through it slowly, the way you do when a place earns that kind of attention. I found myself thinking of all the Roman remains I have encountered across my travels, these ranked among the finest. Not merely for their age, but for the completeness with which they communicate the life that once filled them.

It’s About the Food…Always

Back on the ship that evening, we skipped the dining room for the buffet. Not any buffet, an Indian buffet. We were told the kitchen approached this meal with seriousness. That was evident. The spices were present in the way they should be — not gesturing toward authenticity but delivering it. The kind of depth of flavour that takes time and knowledge and must be done by the right hands. It brought back the subcontinent directly and without apology, the aromas alone enough to transport back. There is a particular pleasure in finding food that does not hedge. Food that commits fully to what it is trying to be. This was that. After a day spent among the achievements of one ancient civilisation, it was deeply satisfying to sit down to the cuisine of another. It was a wonderful meal.

Alicante

Castillo (Castle) de Santa Bárbara sits high above Alicante on a bare rocky outcrop, and it earns its position. The views from the defensive battlements take in the whole curve of the bay. The white city below, and the Mediterranean stretching away to the horizon. It is a fortress that has seen Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, and Spaniards. That is a lot of generations, empires, dynasties and more.  It wears its long history with the blunt indifference of stone that has simply endured. We were glad to have visited. But the castle, if we are being honest, was merely the opening act of our day.

Azamara’s White Night – A True Show Stopper

Azamara makes no secret of its White Night party. It is spoken of aboard ship with the particular reverence that travellers reserve for experiences they have heard about but not yet had. A promised evening that risks, as all promised evenings do, the possibility of falling short. It did not fall short. We dressed in white, as everyone else had, and stepping out onto the deck that evening it was immediately clear that the ship had transformed itself. The guests had risen to the occasion collectively and the effect was genuinely glamorous — hundreds of people in white against the warm Mediterranean night, the ship lit and festive, the sense that something worth remembering was about to unfold.

The dinner that preceded the party was, without qualification, among the finest buffets either of us has encountered at sea or on land. To call it abundant feels inadequate. Lobster, tempura shrimp, sashimi, lamb — the table seemed to extend in every direction, each turn revealing something else that had no business being as good as it was. But it was the crêpes Suzette that settled the matter. Prepared properly, finished in flame, the caramelised orange and butter sauce doing exactly what it should — they were the best I have ever eaten. Not the best on a ship. The best, full stop. The sheer variety and generosity of the evening defied any single attempt to summarise it; it was the kind of meal you keep returning to in conversation for days afterward, each of you remembering something the other had forgotten. Then the pool deck opened, and the real party began.

Dinner Was Only A Warm Up

There is a particular joy in line dancing. We attended a class prior to the party, to learn the moves the dance team would do. Joining in, we felt as if we were part of the dance troop, our timing matching theirs. At least I think it did, the free-flowing wine may have clouded my judgement. We limbo’d. We danced. The band played on and we stayed with them, the warm night air and the residual glow of the finest meal of the voyage conspiring to make leaving unthinkable. When the band finally packed up their instruments, it felt less like an ending than a natural pause — the kind that comes after an evening has given everything it had. Azamara builds its White Night reputation carefully and guards it seriously. Having now been to one, I understand completely why. Some things, it turns out, are as good as advertised.   

València

València rewards the visitor who is willing to slow down, and we were in the right mood for it after our White Night. The cathedral anchored the morning — ancient, layered, and self-possessed in the way of churches that have been absorbing the city’s history for nearly eight centuries. From there we found the Llotja de la Seda, the old silk exchange, where a courtyard of orange trees sat in orderly, fragrant rows, the fruit still hanging heavy on the branches. It was the kind of incidental beauty that a city like València seems to produce without effort, tucked behind an unassuming doorway and entirely unconcerned with whether you noticed it or not.

An Exceptional Market

But the Mercado Central was where the day found its true character. Centred on food, it is one of the largest covered markets in Europe. Operating with the unhurried confidence of a place that serves its neighbourhood first and its visitors second. That instinct is precisely what makes it worth the visit. Locals moved through the stalls with the ease of long habit — selecting, chatting, tasting — and we moved among them happily, grazing on whatever presented itself, the market revealing itself as a place of genuine daily life rather than curated spectacle.

We bought lunch before we left. An Iberian ham sandwich on bread so fresh it was practically still warm — the crust crackling at the first pressure, the inside soft enough to dissolve. We took it outside and ate on a park bench in the sunshine, in front of the market, watching València go about its afternoon. It was, by any objective measure, a simple meal. It was also, in the way that simple meals occasionally are when everything aligns — the bread, the ham, the sunshine, the unhurried moment — completely perfect.

Barcelona — Our Amended Departure

That evening, we set sail for Barcelona, our arrival time was scheduled for 6:00 AM. Putting our luggage out before retiring, we confidently knew we would arrive on time. We have on every other cruise. 

Two months before the cruise started, an email arrived from the Ryanair with the particular cheerful neutrality that carriers deploy when delivering unwelcome news. Our flight from Barcelona to Birmingham, originally scheduled to depart at 11:30 AM, had been moved to 3:30 PM. Four hours had been added to our final day. Four hours we had not asked for and did not especially want. Now to be spent wandering aimlessly through a city we were not prepared to properly visit. We were, not unreasonably, annoyed. The fare was nonrefundable, the alternative was changing dates entirely, and so we absorbed the inconvenience with the resigned pragmatism of experienced travellers who know that the airline always wins. We noted it, filed our irritation away, and got on with the cruise.

The morning of disembarkation was to have begun at 6AM, the ship scheduled to arrive in Barcelona at dawn. It did not arrive at dawn. Somewhere in the approaches to the harbour, the fog had settled in with the kind of dense, unhurried authority that cares nothing for departure schedules or carefully arranged logistics. At 7 AM I went on deck to see the harbour. However, Barcelona was nowhere to be seen. 

Whatever Shall We Do?

There was only the grey-white stillness of a harbour closed to traffic, the water barely visible below, the city entirely erased. It was eerie in the way that fog at sea always is — the world reduced to the ship itself, everything beyond its railings simply absent. The captain’s voice came over the intercom just after seven, calm and measured, to inform us that the port remained closed and that we were sitting second in the queue. Then again at half past seven. Then eight. The announcements arrived every thirty minutes with the steady rhythm of a slow drumbeat, each one a minor variation on the same theme: we are waiting, the port is closed, we will update you shortly. The ship held its position and we held ours. Those with early morning departures were simply out of luck. 

Heading to Port

At half past eight the tone shifted. The port had opened. The captain’s announcement carried something that stopped just short of audible relief, and the ship began to move. Barcelona materialised gradually through the thinning fog — the cranes first, then the waterfront, then the city stacking itself up behind, emerging from the white as though being assembled in real time. We docked at seven minutes past nine, but docking, as any cruiser knows, is merely the beginning of the bureaucratic final chapter. No one was permitted ashore until quarter past ten. Our luggage, checked the night before, needed to find its way from ship to shore. By the time we walked down the gangway it was eleven o’clock in the morning.

Under the original flight plan, we would have missed it by a margin too tight to contemplate. Under the revised one — the revised one we had complained about, the one that had felt like an imposition — we had time. Not time to explore Barcelona, not time to sit at a café or walk the Ramblas or do any of the things the city deserved. But time enough to take the metro to the airport without panic. To check in without the cold sweat of a departures board already flashing our gate. Time enough to board our flight to Birmingham in something approaching composure. 

It Worked Out In The End

The airline, in rescheduling our flight for reasons entirely unrelated to our welfare, had accidentally done us an enormous favour. It is the kind of irony that travel occasionally produces — the frustration that becomes, in retrospect, the thing that saved the day. We settled into our seats as the plane lifted away from Barcelona, the fog long since burned off, the city glittering below us in the late afternoon sun, and I thought about the email two months earlier and the irritation it had caused, and found that I had nothing left to say about it except thank you.

As we left, reflecting on our cruise, we both agreed, we were very impressed with Azamara cruise lines. It is not a question of if we will sail with them again, but when. When we book a big trip, each leg is booked as part of a plan that will allow us to learn more. Learn about ourselves, our world, our neighbours, cultures, history and of course, food. As long as Azamara cruises has a cruise in an area where we hope to be, we’ll be onboard for another adventure. 

Thanks for reading

Feel free to reach out via the link above or leave a comment

Cam and Meg 

This article was written by Cam with help from Meg and Claude AI. All photos are property of Cam and Meg.

Starting Our Cruise

Leaving Lisbon and sailing down the Tagus River, past the Tower of Belém. We said farewell to Portugal and headed down the Iberian coast towards Spain. The next afternoon, we entered the Guadalquivir River, passing through locks, eventually docking in downtown Seville. Our ship, the Azamara Journey, is a smaller vessel, with only 690 guests. This size allows the vessel to visit ports that the larger size cruise ships simply cannot get into. We were very glad to be where no other cruise ship could be. 

Arriving in Seville the Pearl of Andalusia

It was half past seven on the last evening of March and the day was winding down towards night. We stepped into Plaza de España and were lucky enough to see the last of the sun hitting the towers turning everything it touched to beautiful colours of copper and rust. The towers rose above us as the sun withdrew behind them, the long shadows stretching across the curved colonnade and the ceramic-tiled alcoves that lined the plaza’s embrace. Meg hopped into an alcove and there was a theatrical quality to it. 

That night, Seville revealed something else entirely. As we moved into the old city towards the Cathedral, we actually heard it before we saw it. Drums and horns sounded an ongoing beat with chanting also filling the air. Hundreds if not thousands of hooded pilgrims carrying crosses and candles. Their faces obscured, their flames casting long shadows across Seville’s ancient facades. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of people lined the narrow streets and squares. The procession belonged to another century.

Walking Amongst the Procession – A Step Back in Time

Figures in white robes moved slowly through the candlelight. At the head of it all, a great float bore Christ carrying the cross, shoulders bent under its weight. The crowd was silent in the way crowds rarely are — and stilled, as though the city itself had drawn a long, slow breath. We stood among strangers and felt, briefly, like witnesses to something that did not belong to us but had generously admitted us anyway. On the ship, many people had spoken of wanting to witness one of these processions. Having seen it, we now understood why.

Our second day in Seville was given over to wandering, which is the only honest way to move through a city like this. We found the Torre del Oro at the river’s edge in the morning sun. Golden in name and golden in the morning haze. We then turned toward the cathedral — the largest Gothic church in the world, though statistics feel inadequate inside it. We climbed the Giralda, a minaret-turned-bell-tower. The ramps worn smooth by centuries of up and down travel. From the top the view of the city showed colours of the earth. Terracotta and white spreading in every direction. 

Inside the cathedral, the organ commanded the space — more than ten thousand pipes. Even silent in the choir loft, it had a presence, a kind of latent authority.

Visiting Historic Bakeries

Leaving the cathedral, and wandering the narrow alleyways allowed us the most unique moment of our visit here. We found a small bakery run by nuns. We followed a Spanish couple through an innocuous door, which had a small multi-lingual sign saying ‘sweet shop’. The courtyard inside had a little counter with a wooden turnstile.  Beside it, a price list for baked goods. The bakery is run by cloistered nuns.  Customers never see their faces – and vice versa.  Clients knock with the knocker and order by yelling. The nuns place the order on the turnstile, the client verifies and then the nun provides a credit card machine on the turntable which you tap. A very modern touch to a very olden shopping experience.

A Mid-Afternoon Pause

By afternoon our travels had taken us across the river to Triana. This neighbourhood is also where many ceramic tile ‘factories’ are situated. We were able to watch an artist meticulously painting trivets.  She was very intensely focused despite the hubbub around her.

Although the Triana market was closed, the open-air cafés were welcoming.  We ordered drinks and did nothing more than watch Seville go about its business. As we did so, golden hour carried out its slow work on the water. After a long day, that felt like exactly enough.

The Real Alcázar – A Historic Palace

On our final morning, we were at the Real Alcázar at the moment the gates opened. The reward was the kind that patient travellers are occasionally granted: quiet. The reflecting pool held just the two of us in its stillness, the palace’s intricate facade doubled in the water below. Later, the gardens unfolded like a series of secrets — jasmine-scented corridors, hidden fountains, ordered geometry giving way to lush abundance. By afternoon, the city had turned its attention to the sacred. Well-dressed families moved through the crooked alleys toward church services with a purposefulness that reminded us we were passing through, pleasantly unmoored, while Seville observed its own ancient rhythms around us.

Off to Cadiz.

There is a lightness to Cádiz that Seville, for all its grandeur, does not possess. Where Seville draws you inward with shadowed courtyards, candlelit processions and the gravity of centuries — Cádiz opens outward: toward the Atlantic, toward the sky. It is one of the oldest cities in Western Europe. While it has miles of beaches, and hotels, historically, the town guarded the harbour entrance. Several forts can still be found around its coast. 

The buildings are bleached, salt-scrubbed and cheerful. The white facades bright in the morning sun. We began at Torre Tarvia, the tallest building in the old town. It has a camera obscura, essentially a periscope – a tube with a mirror and lenses – which projects a live image of the city projected onto a circular table in miniature. Rooftops, streets, and neighbours seen hanging laundry, watering plants and anything else that they do on their rooftop terraces. The surrounding sea rendered in silence, like a living map of a place that had long since stopped being in any hurry.

Nothing has Changed for Centuries

Wandering the old town, we were rewarded in the way that only truly ancient places can reward you. You could tell, moving through its narrow streets, that very little had fundamentally changed here over time. The stones underfoot, the low doorways and the small plazas opening unexpectedly off crooked alleys must have looked more or less like this for longer than most cities have existed. It was not a museum stillness, though. Locals moved through it with the casual ownership of people who have never needed to be impressed by where they live. We moved among them happily, unhurried, letting the streets decide our direction.

In the afternoon we found the beach, and the city fell away behind us. The sun was warm as we walked the long curve of sand. The Atlantic stretching wide and blue to the west. After the incense and the candlelight of Holy Week Seville, there was something deeply restorative about the clean air and open horizon. We both find the steady sound of the surf and the simple pleasure of walking with our feet in the cool sea with no particular destination to be relaxing. I think everyone does. 

Gibraltar – England’s Hold on the Med

Once the ship had arrived, we went ashore and found a city bus to take us to the Rock of Gibraltar. The bus climbed the switchbacks, and, as the town got smaller, we saw the sea pressing in on both sides. From up on the Rock, you have a great view. To the north, the Spanish coastline curving away toward Algeciras; to the south, Africa. Not the idea of Africa, but the actual continent, close enough to feel like a short swim rather than another world. 

The Strait of Gibraltar is only 14 kilometres at its narrowest. Standing at the top of the Rock, with the Mediterranean on one side and the Atlantic beginning on the other, you understand instinctively why this small, improbable place has been fought over for so long. It is not merely a piece of land. It is the hinge between oceans, continents and civilisations.

We needed to climb the last bit and it was an uphill climb. Inside, the tunnels begin to explain themselves slowly. As you enter, rock closes around you, and what reveals itself over the course of several hours is not a single feat of engineering but a composition. Excavations carried out across different wars and different centuries, each generation of defenders burrowed deeper and extended further. Their goal, to find new ways to make the mountain serve the purposes of survival. 

Canadian Contributions to the Tunnels (and Victory)

The earliest galleries date to the Great Siege of the 1780s, hand-drilled by British soldiers into limestone. But it was the Canadian contribution during the Second World War that made us proud. Working under conditions that were by any measure extraordinary. There was the constant noise, the dust, the darkness, the urgency of a war, whose outcome in 1942, remained genuinely uncertain. Yet, Canadian engineers still helped carve out a vast network of tunnels sufficient to house and supply an entire garrison. 

What lingers, walking back out into the sunshine, is the cumulative weight of the place. Gibraltar is only six and a half square kilometres, and yet it contains so much history: Moorish fortifications, British colonial architecture, a population that is neither fully Spanish nor straightforwardly English. Beneath the surface of the Rock itself, this extraordinary hidden city of tunnels that most visitors never fully reckon with. 

Once we finished with the Rock, we found our way to the most southerly point in Europe. Our impression is simply that it is windy.  Our captain had been pleasantly surprised at the lack of wind when we docked; I had trouble standing against it at Europa Lighthouse.  Apparently, it is often worse. 

Málaga

Easter Sunday arrives differently in Málaga than it does in Seville. Where Seville’s Holy Week processions carry the full weight of penitence and solemnity, Málaga on Easter morning had shaken something loose — there was joy in it. A brightness that matched the day itself. The procession that stopped traffic was less a funeral march and more of a celebration, the crowds lining the streets in good spirits, children on shoulders, the floats moving through the city with a kind of triumphant ease. We stood among the throng and let it wash over us before the cathedral doors drew me in.

The Málaga Cathedral is a magnificent and slightly unfinished thing — it has been missing its second tower since the eighteenth century, the funds for its completion having been redirected to the American Revolution, of all places. Inside, the Easter Sunday mass was in full voice, the Spanish rolling through the vaulted space with great confidence and zero concession to the uninitiated. I lasted approximately thirty minutes, following none of it, before slipping quietly out into the sunshine with what I can only describe as the mild sheepishness of a student leaving an exam early. The cathedral deserved better attention than I was equipped to give it that morning.

The afternoon redeemed everything. I climbed the hill above the city, and the path gave way to wildflowers — great drifts of colour along the hillside, vivid against the dry scrub and the pale stone. Below and beyond, the Mediterranean stretched out in every direction, flat and luminous and endless under the Easter sun. After the tunnels of Gibraltar, the solemnity of Seville, the ancient stones of Cádiz, there was something quietly perfect about sitting on a hillside among wildflowers, with nothing between us and Africa but open water and light.

End of Part I of our Iberian Cruise

For now, we thank you for reading the first part of our Iberian cruise. It has been a blast. Our cruise will carry on to Cartagena, Alicante, White Night, Valencia and finally Barcelona. Stay tuned.

Feel free to reach out via the link above or leave a comment

Cam and Meg