Cordoba (the city not the car)

*This is a guest post written by my mom because I don't really have the time. I added comments throughout*

Next stop, Cordoba. We had a much shorter train ride. What a fine place! Every time we left our hotel, we walked down a beautiful street lined with orange trees (picture 1). Here, our first tourist stop was the Mezquita. It is now a working cathedral, but much of the structure from the original mosque was preserved. It is just a forest of columns with red and white arches. It is visually so striking (picture 2). One of the other features is the Mihrab, the prayer niche. It was crowded and difficult to get a look at this very ornate section. The mosque was built in various phases starting from 784AD. It was once the second largest mosque in the world. After the reconquest, a Christian nave was plopped right into the middle of it. The quote from all the tour books on this is that even though he approved the change, Charles V said, “You have taken something extraordinary and made it ordinary.” But I don’t think they had the power to totally ruin it. The sea of arches is still exquisite. (Jeremy: There were a lot of tourists inside but it was still a great experience. I loved the arches. The orange grove that is now in the courtyard of the Mezquita used to be a courtyard of palm trees. The arches inside were supposed to emulate the palm trees which I think they do. Also, there used to 41 doors into the Mezquita for people to enter and exit for prayers. It must have been very airy and wonderful. Now, there's one door. Also, it was quite dark inside which put a damper on my pictures but created a really cool atmosphere. Also, there was a bell tower at the Mezquita too (picture 3). I don't think it was part of the old mosque but I can't really remember.)

After this we found our perfect lunch spot, the Gallo de Oro (picture 4). They were roasting chickens that smelled heavenly. They only sold the chickens whole, so we had to settle for a lunch meat sandwich—a title that doesn’t do it justice. Okay, I was also prejudiced by the reasonable price. The worker was so kind to us, explaining everything. We ate on the square in the sunshine—a sweet moment. (Jeremy: I love the name of that restaurant, The Golden Chicken. Also, the square we ate in was really cool. There were a couple trees and benches. It was pretty quiet too. The sandwiches were really good, grilled lunch meat and toasted bread with vegetables. Yum.)

We wandered around looking for a bookstore and looking for the Synagogue. Horror of horrors, I had finished the book I was reading. I was facing waiting for buses and trains and a possible sleepless night with no book!! We found a store, but the books were too expensive for me. We circled one long round of maybe four blocks looking for the synagogue. Then we ended up circling the same thing because we had been close, but missed it by one turn. Then we found it was closed for the siesta and circled the whole thing again while waiting for it to open. We were surprised at how much the synagogue looked like the mosque. The main difference was that the writing was in Hebrew (picture 5). (Jeremy: It needs to be mentioned that the Synagoue was also extremely tiny. I bet not even ten people could fit inside comfortably. Also, this is one of only three synagogues remaining in all of Spain after the Jews were expelled in 1492.)

We ate at a restaurant with a crabby waiter/owner. We had two appetizers, pisto—sort of like ratatouille and salmorejo—a different kind of cold creamy tomato soup with hard boiled eggs and ham on top. Then we had omelets which were not an exciting main dish. Oh well. The dessert was pudding in a plastic cup! At least the appetizers were good. We continued with our main entertainment, walking. It was wonderful to see the doors of the Mezquita lit up at night ( the doors during the day because my night pictures weren't great, picture 6).

Our hotel was definitely the best one of the trip. They really made an effort to make it beautiful. The sheets and towels were thicker than the Kleenex-thin things we’d been used to. The room had been painted a bright periwinkle. We had our own bathroom! Unfortunately, this was the worst night of sleep I had. We could hear a lot of traffic noise and people talking in the street until very late. In the morning, as nice as the room was, the shower flooded onto the bathroom floor. We really had a deluge. Even if we had to wait at bit, the breakfast was also the best of the trip and worth it. This marked three meals in 24 hours! Yay!