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Issy's still struggling with the light switches, and the lights go on and off again several times while I'm in the shower the same as they did yesterday. There are no windows in the bathroom and it's very dark when the lights go out. I think that maybe I need to start taking a torch into the shower with me.
We look for a restaurant to get some breakfast. Our chosen establishment has six items on its breakfast menu; four of them involve toast with different types of jam and the other two involve croissants with different types of jam. I wonder why there are two types of jam that you can put on toast, but not on croissants.
We get on the hop on hop off bus to try to find out which of Cordoba's sights we should investigate further. There are two bus routes; one with a small bus and one with a big bus. We get on the small bus which takes us through the narrow streets of the old part of town. We pass some Roman ruins right next to the town hall, which the recorded commentary tells us were only discovered quite recently when
they went to rebuild the hall. We suspect that this might happen quite often here. We move through into the more modern part of Cordoba, which feels a bit less like a museum. The bus then crosses the river where we get an excellent panoramic view across the river to old Cordoba, and particularly the Mezquita Cathedral. We change to get on the big bus. We hope it doesn't take the same route; apart from not wanting to see the same things twice, it looks like it might struggle to fit through the narrow streets in the old part of town, which were a tight squeeze even for the small bus.
It's again very hot, so I go down to the hotel pool for a swim, and we both have siestas. It's Monday, and we'd been warned when we first arrived here that most museums and monuments in Cordoba are closed on Mondays. This seems to include most places that we want to visit, which is a bit frustrating. I don't think you'd be very happy if you only planned to spend one day here and it turned out to be a Monday. We go out wandering. We pass
a sign to a museum which is a preserved house from the Moorish era. Miraculously it's open, so we go in. It's very peaceful, and is built around courtyards filled with fountains and large potted plants. The basement's floor is covered with mosaic tiles which look to be from Roman times.
We look for somewhere to eat dinner, and spot a restaurant where it says you can dine on the roof terrace. Issy says that we should look for other restaurants with roof terraces and pick the best one. She sees a roof terrace that she really likes. It looks perfect. Unfortunately it's not a restaurant; it's someone's house. Issy doesn't seem too keen on my suggestion that we knock on the door anyway and see if the occupants wouldn't mind whipping up a few plates of tapas and jugs of sangria and serving them up for us on their roof terrace. We go back to the first restaurant we saw with the roof terrace. The setting is idyllic. I try to converse with the waiter in Spanish. His responses suggest that he now thinks that we're Italian, so I try to tell him in Spanish that we're actually
Australian. He looks embarrassed, and apologises for his English. I try to apologise for my Spanish, but then realise that I don't know the Spanish word for "apologise". Everyone that we've come across in Spain seems to speak a lot more English than I do Spanish, and the three months I've spent sitting in front of the TV every night with my Duolingo app have clearly not been very productive. I'm starting to feel very discouraged. We finish dinner. I decide that I don't want to try any more Spanish today, so I tell Issy what I think the Spanish words might be for "can we have the bill please". The waiter understands her perfectly. Now I feel even more discouraged.
We walk down to the river to see the Roman bridge and ancient buildings lit up at night. They look spectacular.
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Issy that is a fantastic photo of you on the terrace...well done Dave.