Religious Tourists: Part Dos

Córdoba, Spain, 23rd July 2012

Our day trip to Córdoba was another hastily (or rather, not at all) planned affair. We knew it was nice, although our planned visit to the Alhambra was cancelled when we discovered just a few days earlier that the Alhambra is in fact in Granada, nowhere near Córdoba at all. Courtesy of a free map from the train station tourist bureau, we managed to construct our day over a beer and a sandwich at a nearby café.

Yet another "impressive gateway" picture ruined by roadworks

Self explanatory narrow street

I'm not sure why but I always imagined Córdoba to be a grand, imposing city. Maybe it's the name. Maybe I just imagined it. In any case it's quite far from the truth and the old town is a mishmash of winding cobbled streets, whitewashed houses and various older historical buildings dotted around. The first of these we entered was the Alcazar, the Garden of the Kings. At 6€ per person entry, M was not too impressed (the castle was open every other day of the week but not this one, and the ticket also included a lights and laser show in the evening, when we would be back in Sevilla - great planning), and I was impressed with the amount of water used to keep the plants green and the pools filled in a region which is so starved of it. Still, it was nice to look at. Hopefully our entrance fees will go towards the construction of a desalination plant.

Alcazar from the outside

Alcazar from the inside. No crying at the discotheque here...

More wandering, more sights. The "Roman Bridge" had obviously been restored since those days but still afford a nice view of both sides of the river and of the river itself. Various other buildings that were nice to look at and that we were too lazy to identify and, in any case, we were content enough to wander around admiring them. The heat wasn't conducive to any extensive archaeological research. One building that we did try to enter was the Mesquita which, like many large buildings in Andalucia, began its life as a Moorish mosque, was converted into a church, and is now open to tourists. Could we be heading for our second religious experience in two days ? A sign at the door informed us that entrance was 18€ per head. We'd already seen the gardens and the inside of one large ex-mosque church, so we went for a beer instead which proved to be an inspired choice.

Mesquita gardens illustrative shot

Attempted artistic shot of same

We'd got tickets to a Flamenco show in Sevilla for that evening so we started a long, slow, rambling walk back to the train station. Córdoba is a lovely place, the kind of town you could spend days getting lost in, although our day trip of around 6 hours was pretty much perfect. As in every place we'd been so far the streets were busy with people, walking as slowly as we were, stopped for a chat with friends or to sit on a bench and watch the world go by. Hopefully I'll come back some day to explore a bit further.

Artistic shot of the day #2

Post-scriptum:

 The flamenco was great - a permantly smiling male guitarist with a female singer whose corpulence was an impressive as her voice, and a classically Spanish-looking couple of dancers. After the hour-long show, we wandered off to find a place to get a snack, marvelling at the energy of the dancers. "They must train so hard to get into that kind of shape !" M exclaimed. We found a place to sit and, a few minutes later, the two dancers sat on the table opposite us, ordered 2 large beers and got their cigarette packets out. Conclusion: there's hope for everyone.

Flamenco dancer. Half man, half hologram.