Life in Cartagena

When I wrote the last post on this blog - Looking for a flat - I should really have written it on the Life in Culebrón blog because that's where I am at the moment. In fact, apart from working in Cartagena it looks as though my links with the place are about to be cut. I am in the process of signing up for a flat in La Unión and the logic of naming the blogs must mean that the active ones are the places where I have a kettle. La Unión and El Culebrón. There is a tab at the top of the page to navigate there or this is the link

Finding a house to rent in Spain is usually a pretty straightforward process. When I say house I really mean flat because, although it's not impossible to find houses in the middle of a town or city, by far the most usual style of dwelling for urban Spaniards is the flat. I need to qualify this a bit further. It's easy to find a place if you are willing to pay an estate agent. The other options involve walking around random streets looking for to rent signs with your mobile phone to hand. We've only ever done it a couple of times and it has not produced good results. The internet has made it a slightly less fraught process to find an individual renter and the place that Maggie rented in Ciudad Rodrigo came that way. Even then it takes ages to sift through the various websites usually to find that nobody answers your email or phone call except for the estate agents. The estate agent method is the most straightforward but also the most costly. The standard char...

In the Third Century BC Hannibal used the silver mined from the area around what is now La Unión to pay for his elephants. In fits and starts tin, iron and lead have been mined from the same hills right up to 1990. La Unión looks like a pit village, not exactly the prettiest town in Spain, but top marks to the locals for setting up a park based on the archaeological history of the area. Bottom marks for letting people into it. We tried to get into the park when we went to the Mining Museum one Wednesday afternoon but we were turned away as it was nearly closing time. We had another go last Saturday and they attempted to turn us away again. "There's only one train per session and it's gone and you need to reserve a ticket" "So can we reserve a ticket for tomorrow?" "No it's full" "Can we walk into the park then?, the leaflet says you can" "No we only have guided visits" Bit of a flutter now between the two people ...

There wasn't much on at the pictures so I suggested we have a look at the mining museum in La Unión. It was a mistake. Look at the photo. This museum was opened in 2001. It looks like something from the 1950s. Over detailed information on how to use a chisel and hammer to make a blast hole then cases and cases of unlabelled exhibits. Definitely up there as one of the most tedious museums I have ever visited. Mind you we picked up a leaflet about the new "mine route" and that looks like it should be good so we're not done with La Unión yet.