Cordoba

We left Seville mid-day on Saturday and declared the rest of the day to be a rest day.  All we had to do was drive about 1 1/2 hours to Cordoba, the next and last stop on our whirlwind tour of the Andalusia area of southern Spain.  Cordaba is further inland than Seville and the landscape changed rather dramatically to be miles and miles of rolling fields.  It was quite lovely and quite different from what we had seen so far along the coast and through the mountains.

Once we reached Cordoba and found it to be a little over 100 degrees the only sane thing to do was go to the hotel pool for the afternoon.

We have been staying at fabulous hotels on this little trip - all 4 star hotels, all with pools and air conditioning.  The hotels are ridiculously cheap for the quality.  We are paying well under $100 a night including parking and taxes and whatever.  Our hotel coming up for 3 nights in Madrid is $67 a night and it is 4 star also.  It was a lovely way to spend the afternoon especially given the heat.  Larry walked around town a bit but finally succombed to the heat and joined me at the pool. 

We attempted to take the bus into the center of the city to find dinner without a bus map (because there apparently aren't any such maps).  We had our first mishap of the bus variety - ending up way out of town at the end of the bus line, having to wait 15 minutes and pay again to come back into town on the same bus.  We then ended up walking in the last bit, which turned out to be lovely. 

The main attraction in Cordoba is the Mezquita Catherdal-Mosque and we ended up walking across the pedestrian bridge just at sunset.  Magnificent!

We had a terrific dinner and ended up walking back to the hotel, not wanting to risk another bus trip.

We didn't explore the Mezquita until the next morning.  The guidebooks say that despite having seen all the other castles, forts and cathedrals in Europe, this one is something different - nothing like the rest.  You'll never see anything like it - and we agree!  It is very hard to convey the scale of this place
First a little history, there was a church located near the river.  The Islamic community rented half of the church as its mosque.  They outgrew that space and ended up buying the rest of the church, which they tore down and made into a large mosque.  Then, along come the catholics during the 'reconquest' (I love that term.) and they rip out the center of the mosque and build a cathedral smack dab in the middle of the mosque.  The effect is quite bizarre and mostly lovely.  It has been very well maintained and was protected from destruction by the catholic authorities.  It is hard to explain but these pictures below all came from inside the same place.  The cathedral part is in the center and it is surrounded by the beautiful red and white arches of the mosque.

After exploring the Mezquita we took a cab back to the hotel, checked out and hit the road for "home" in Valencia, figuring (incorrectly) that we could get something to eat once we were on the road.  We found a nice looking restaurant but it didn't open until 1 pm and it was only 12.  Then we found another one which opened at 2, but by now it was only 1pm, so we kept driving. We ended up not eating until around 4:30 in the afternoon and that, believe it or not, was at a closed shopping mall (it was SUNDAY) at a McDonalds.  This was the first time we have eaten American fast food in Europe this trip, despite seeing many McDonalds and Burger Kings, but we were starving by this point in the day.  (I have to admit it was really, really good.)

The most amazing thing (other than eating) on the way home was the landscape - for several hours we drove through olive orchards which went up and down the hills and went out as far as the eye could see - miles and miles and miles of them.  Larry later looked up Spanish olive oil and discovered that 95% of the olive oil in the world comes form the Mediterranean area and Spain is the primary poducer - outdoing Italy by 2 to 1.  Who knew?

This central/southern part of the Spain is a very high plain and we saw several hundred wind turbines, as well as a large number of solar cell farms.  I think oil is very expensive and they are really embracing alternative energy here in Spain.  Good for them.