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The realities of travelling, Barcelona
Drying knickers, undies and T-shirts in front of the iconic Sagrada Familia Today we leave for Cordoba. We pack and then clean the apartment. We haven't stayed in an apartment before on either this trip or the last one, so we're not entirely sure what we're supposed to do. I tell Issy that I'm pretty sure professional cleaners will come in and clean it before the next guests arrive, and that we don't need to do this ourselves, but I don't think she believes me. By the time she finishes, the apartment is much cleaner than it was when we arrived, and probably cleaner than it was when it was first built. I make a last desperate attempt to dry the washing on the balcony.
We catch the metro to Estacion Sants which is Barcelona's main station. There are lots of steps we need to go up and down in the metro and our bags seem to have gained weight while we've been here.
Issy orders a soy hot chocolate at the station. It's like thick chocolate fudge. She says she can't tell if it has any soy milk in it; she's not entirely sure that it's got any milk in it at all. She says it looks and tastes like
The Maltese connection, Cordoba
Issy in front of a restaurant named after her Uncle John Calleja pure melted chocolate. I'm not sensing she thinks that this is a bad thing, but she says it makes her feel guilty.
The landscape close to Barcelona is well populated with grape vines, but it then quickly seems to get much drier and almost devoid of trees. There is however no shortage of wind farms. Issy says that this is a good thing and that we should have more wind farms in Australia. I think that maybe they don't get quite as worried about chopping up endangered bird species in wind farm propellers in Spain as we seem to get back home. We change trains in Madrid, where it's noticeably cooler. We arrive in Cordoba and marvel again at the wonders of European train travel. Our transport has been charging along at up to 300 kilometres per hour and we've crossed virtually the whole of Spain in about four hours. We bemoan the absence of anything even vaguely similar back home.
Our very cute hotel is in the old Jewish quarter of Cordoba, and is similar in style to the riad we stayed at in Marrakesh last year, with all the rooms facing into central courtyards. We had
heard that the architecture in southern Spain had a strong Moorish influence. Our room overlooks a swimming pool which will probably come in handy, as we'd heard that Cordoba is the hottest city in Europe. It feels like it; a thermometer in the street says it's 41 degrees, and it's 5 o'clock in the afternoon. I think I remember reading somewhere that the average number of rainy days in Cordoba in July is zero. I wonder what happens in Julys when they get a below average number of rainy days.
We have a short siesta and then go wandering through the maze of narrow alleyways around the hotel. We pass some of the famous historic buildings we've read about and plan to visit later, including the Mezquita Cathedral and the Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos. The amazing architecture looks to be a blend of traditional European and Moorish. We walk across the river along the old Roman bridge where we listen to a brass band playing at the base of the Calahorra Tower on the far side.
We dine in an idyllic setting in restaurant in a small courtyard a few metres from the hotel. The patatas bravas
are as good as they were in Barcelona, despite them appearing just a fraction too quickly, and only a very short time after we hear the characteristic "ding" of a microwave.
The mini bar in our room is well stacked, but none of the bottles have screw tops and there's no bottle opener. We ring reception. They bring us a bottle opener to open the drinks we want, but they then tell us that they need to take it back again. Issy's not happy; I think she was planning on having more than one drink. She says it's silly that we have to ring reception every time we want to have a drink from the mini bar, which she says rather defeats the purpose of having a mini bar in the first place. I think she might have a point. I also think that it might be good idea if we bought a bottle opener tomorrow.
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