AVE, Cordoba

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AVE, zoom zoom

This was my first experience with a bullet train; at one point we were going in excess of 250 K/h. Wheee! that was fun!! Can we go again? It was great watching the countryside zooming past.

A funny note: in the US, we have the ubiquitous black luggage; in Espania, it is the ubiquitous red luggage. No pom-poms, doo-dads, ribbons, or identifiers of any sort that I can find; I've no clue how they tell which is theirs.

When I arrived in Cordoba, I went looking for the TI but it was closed till 16:00 (it was 1:30pm). Time for Tapas. Sat next to a cute family from England, now living in Minesota. They are driving about Spain with 3 and 9 y/o children. The 3 year old reminded me of Lila, whom I am now missing terribly.

I then went walking around to see if I could find a room on my own, and lucked into an amazing hotel and an amazing deal; brand new with tile and marble (yes, a bit noisy). The staff are very friendly, and remind me of the staff at Hotel Europa in Madrid. They have less English, but we communicate fine. I hope this means my Spanish is improving.

Mezquita y Roman Bridge

After checking into the hotel, I went for a walk and ended up at the Mezquita. The interior was overwhelming: it was beautiful, and OH! the amazing architecture and construction. The tall thin pillars with those huge arches, the juxtaposition of the religious icons, the amazing frescoes, the tiles, and the red/white stripes. Like I said, overwhelming.

I then walked down to, and across, the Roman Bridge. The city is doing some restoration on it, you can still see the old structure, but they've laid new stones on top and rebuilt the entrances on both sides. One of the old guard houses is still crumbling in the river, I got a pretty good shot of it.

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