Cordoba

Our day began a little behind schedule, with me waking up at about 9:58am and going, hmm, aren’t we supposed to be up by now. Casually I nudged mom and asked her if it was go time. We got ready for the day and were out the door within the hour. The first thing on our never-ending list of things to do was eat breakfast. A chore harder than one might imagine on a Sunday in Spain. Everything is closed, even the hotel cafeteria! So we wandered down the street to my favorite coffee shop El Tren (I’m not even going to translate that) and luckily it was open so we had a couple croissants and a cup of café con leche between the two of us. We walked back to the hotel and managed to maneuver the car out of the hotel parking garage. It was so miserable parking the night before that we were doubtful if we would be able to park down there again. After successfully not scratching the sides of the brand new rental car (Citroen C4) we made our way out of the city, which is not so easy with its narrow one-way streets and lack of stop signs.

Our first stop was Córdoba, a city that dates back to the Romans, over 2,000 years ago. It reached the height of its power when it was the former capital of Andalucia, when it was known as Al-Andalus and under Moorish rule. Rivaling Baghdad in power and wealth it is home to The Mezquita, an enormous mosque built in the 8th century. Córdoba, where Jews and Christians worked alongside Muslims, was captured in 1236 by the Catholic Monarch Ferdinand and used as a strategic position for the Catholic Monarch’s siege of Granada in 1492. Don’t quote me on this, its just what I remember from history class…


Córdoba is much warmer than Granada, that was the first thing I noticed, also its ancient center is much more secluded than that of Granada. You walk through the gates at the Puerta de Almodóvar and immediately you step back in time. Narrow streets with whitewashed houses line the streets. Pebble and cobblestone streets make thin-soled shoes a bad idea and the blazing sun makes one feel like they are on the Mediterranean, not three hours from a beach. We walked through the streets and made our way to the Mezquita. Walking into the Orange gardens was absolutely spectacular, I didn’t realize that there was more to see. After shelling out some euros we made our way into the mosque and its vastness overwhelmed me. Its just a huge expanse of space broken up by red and white striped arches. We roamed around in semi darkness and snapped several, well, probably more than several, photos of the mosque and the arches. For me, the most impressive thing wasn’t the craftsmanship, but the sheer size of the mosque. We seemed to walk for ages and all we could see were arches and more arches.

After the mosque we tried to find the tourism office, but settled for the Palacio de Congresos and some toilets instead. For lunch we grabbed some ice cream and continued our tour around the city. Seeing as we only had a few hours of daylight left we made our way through the ancient Jewish Quarter and then back to the car. You pay for parking your car by inserting the card you receive upon entering into an automatic machine on the -1 floor. You then pay what it tells you, it spits the card back out, and you drive off. When you get to the gate you insert the already paid for card and continue on your way. For an American, who is used to paying at the gate, you can see how this had the possibility of being quite a tricky situation, especially since we were parked on -2 and didn’t have auto pay machine thingys on our level.

We left Córdoba and headed for Úbeda, some little town about 2 hours away that has really nice 16th century architecture. Needless to say, on the way it was starting to get dark and by the time we got there it was pitch black out and we could barely read street signs, let alone see the sights. We stopped at some old looking building, which turned out to be a former hospital now turned in to their Palacio de Congresos and Exposiciones. Lots of Palacios today. We took some pretty bad night shots and piled back in the car with the intention of just heading back to Granada. A few one-way streets later we were committed. We ended up driving the old city, unless the new part of the city has a huge rustic wall surrounding it, and passing an overlook that I can only imagine is the most beautiful view during the day. Mom pulled over and I hopped out to snap a nighttime shot, but when I saw things moving down the mountain, somewhere not to far from where I was standing, I decided I was better off in the car.

We continued on the curvy dark road that had a drop off the side of the mountain and miraculously made it back to civilization and back to the interstate! Decided to skip Baeza because it would have been too dark to see anything anyways and headed back to Granada, which was about 2 hours. By the time we got home it was about 9pm and we were STARVING. But, as it was still Sunday, lots of places were closed. We parked the car on the street by my apartment rather than deal with the hotel lot again. We wandered to my favorite tapas bar, but it was closed so we walked one street over to see if we could find anything lucky. Found a tiny Italian bar/café/restaurant and feasted on pizza after a day of quasi-fasting. And by feasted I mean we each had our own pizza. Delicious. Cant wait to wake up tomorrow and do it all again!

From the driver’s perspective
"The paved roads of Andalusia Spain are very nice and easy to navigate. The cobblestone ones are a completely different story. I have never needed to back up to make a turn before, but then again I’ve never been in Spain before either.
My day consisted of saying” what’s that, take a picture.” So I have some pictures that have no name but are very beautiful. Liz doesn’t like my date stamp on the photos, so tomorrow I’ll have to figure out how to turn that off. "