Who Gets a Private Charter on Spanish Waters? We Do. (Sort Of.)

CARTAGENA

Who Gets a Private Charter on Spanish Waters? We Do. (Sort Of.)

The drive from Barcelona to Cartagena to see Marianne and Mitch takes about six hours in good conditions, and we had beautiful calm weather for it. The landscape changes significantly as you move south along the coast: the lush green of Catalonia gives way to something more arid and sun-baked, the Mediterranean light shifting toward that particular quality it has in the south of Spain where everything seems to be happening at a slightly warmer frequency. As we were driving the highways felt fairly empty and had us wondering where all of the people were?

Marianne is Matt's aunt. She and her husband Mitch live on their sailboat in Cartagena. Not 'they have a sailboat they keep in Cartagena.' They live on it. Full time. In the Mediterranean.

They’ve spent a better part of the past 10 years living in Puerto Rico and then sailing around Europe staying till their tourist visit ran out before setting in Spain. They represent a life decision of a particular boldness that I find genuinely inspiring every time I think about it.

Their boat is home. Cartagena is their port. And when Matt and I came to visit, they showed us exactly how they spend their days in this city that sits on the southeastern tip of Spain, with Roman ruins in the city center and the sea right there and no commute except the one from below deck to above.

Day one in Cartagena: Matt got to drive Little Red.

Little Red is their Renault 4, an older model in that particular shade of red that old French economy cars come in, small and cheerful and utterly at home on narrow Spanish coastal roads. Matt drove it to a local beach with Zorro, their adorable pup and obvious captain of their lives riding along as Matt’s co-captain. Zorro takes his duties very seriously.

In the afternoon, we alldrove to La Azohía, a small fishing village about 35 minutes from Cartagena, for lunch. Seafood, paella, the Mediterranean in front of us. This is the kind of meal that doesn't require a lot of description because the setting does most of the work: fresh fish in a place where the boats that caught it are visible from your table.

Back in Cartagena, Matt and I visited the ancient Roman Theater. Cartagena was a major Roman city, one of the most important in Hispania, and the theater dates to the 1st century BC. It was buried for centuries and only excavated starting in the 1980s, which means it's extraordinarily well preserved in places, the stone seating tiers still intact, the stage area recognizable as what it was.

We found a nice little restaurantwhere not a word of English was spoken that evening. Cartagena has that quality of being genuinely lived-in rather than tourist-configured, which you feel most clearly at dinner when the restaurants are full of people who live there.

The next day, Marianne and Mitch took us sailing.

The Mediterranean was not cooperative. The seas were rough and choppy in a way that made anchoring for lunch impossible, which had been the plan. Matt did not do well on the rough water. This is a diplomatic way of saying that my husband spent a significant portion of our private sailing charter on the Mediterranean feeling genuinely unwell and below deck knocked out by a motion sickness pill Marianne had.

Here is what I want you to understand about Marianne: she is on a boat that is actively pitching in rough seas, the anchoring plan has been abandoned, and she decided to cook anyway. On a Swiss stovetop oven contraption thing she keeps on board. A deep dish pizza. From scratch, essentially, on a moving vessel in choppy water on the Mediterranean Sea.

It was delicious. She is extraordinary. Matt was grateful and also slightly green.

Whogets a private charter on Spanish waters? We do. It's not something I'll ever take for granted.

The trip ended with a sunrise in Tarragona, the ancient Roman city on the Catalan coast north of Barcelona. It was our last morning in Spain before the flight home that evening.

There's a particular quality to the last morning of a trip. Everything is already slightly past tense: you're watching something you're already beginning to remember rather than fully inhabit. A good sunrise helps. The Spanish coast at first light is an excellent last image to carry home.

A long, great week. Spain, we'll be back.