Murcia is not on any tourist hot list for Spain. It is a good sized city in an agricultural area, but has a reputation as a place that you go to for business, but not for fun. So we were looking forward to seeing the city.
We started at the cathedral as we do in many cities. The cathedral was large and imposing as intended, but not particularly interesting on the outside. We entered and I hesitated because a mass was going on. But the mass occupied a small part of the cathedral, and the rest appeared to be open to visitors. I enjoyed walking thru the cathedral and appreciated it more because the sound of the mass was in the background. It tied the spiritual part of the cathedral to the architectural part in a way I didn’t expect.
Our next stop was the old casino in the center of the city. It is still known by its original name of Real Casino de Murcia (Royal Casino of Murcia). But it is now a social club whose membership costs €2000 per year. They allow tours of the club and it is an interesting building.
There are many rooms and each is decorated differently. The style is classical casino, without the games, so it is not subtle. Each room had a theme and was decorated to reflect that theme.
After the casino we walked the streets of the town and enjoyed the afternoon ambiance. There were a few fellow tourists around, but most of the people were locals going about their business.
When a town center has not been turned into a tourist theater we notice that the makeup of the shops on the streets change. The stores are more geared to meet the needs of the people who live there, so you see shops selling hardware, and vegetables, and electronics. It is a subtle difference but we like the feel better than rows of t-shirt shops, and authentic “name your country/city” goods. For us the stores are more interesting and since we are traveling on longer trips often more useful to us.
Our lunch was again excellent, the main dish was called a cauldron. It is a local dish of rice and seafood, but prepared quite differently than Paella which is THE Spanish rice and seafood dish. I think I liked the Cauldron better as the spices were more interesting. .
Our last stop for the day was the “Puente de Los Peligros”. The English translation would be “The Dangerous Bridge.” It didn’t look particularly dangerous, but the river walk leading up to it was nice and because there has been a lot of rain in the mountains the color of the water was particularly interesting.
The day had started with rain, but for most of the time we had been walking we had clear skies. But as we approached the bridge the skies turned ominous and just as we left the bridge a real downpour began and drove us undercover. At that point we decided to hail a taxi and head back to the campground.
We spent the next couple of hours huddled up in François listening to the rain and in my case sleeping. After the rain let up we had another nice meal prepared by Kit with Tons help. The evening ended with another round of Portuguese rummy before we called it a night.
Murcia is not a city catering to tourists. It does have some tourist infrastructure but it is not overrun with tourists which is why I think I found it more interesting than some of the more famous cities we have visited in Spain.
