Cordoba

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Day 11 (Friday, April 3rd, 2009)

We had initially planned on waking up this day at 8:30, but we didn’t end up rolling out of bed until 9:40. For some reason, we were both incredibly exhausted that morning; Mike thought it might have been due to the excessive amount of walking we had done the day prior in Sevilla.

We finally left the hotel in Sevilla around 10:45. We then had to walk 20 minutes in order to reach the parking garage. Once we settled ourselves into the car, we drove about 1.5 hours until we reached Cordoba.

Finding our hotel in Cordoba was an absolute nightmare due to the one-way streets. Our navigation system kept telling us to turn onto streets that we we were unable to, so it made finding the hotel nearly impossible. It felt as though we kept driving in circles, which we probably did for nearly one hour; one of the most stressful driving experiences to date, not including the incidents in London and Birmingham, which I'd rather not mention!

Out of utter frustration and because I had run out of all other ideas, I recommended to Mike that we drive entirely out of the old historic core so that we could approach the area that the hotel was supposed to be in from a different direction. This seemed to be the trick as we had no issues finding the hotel. Upon arrival, we were both so thankful to see that there was still parking available in their underground garage, which cost us 8 Euros.

We checked into our room at Hotel Maestre, which was decent, nothing fancy, but worked for us. Some reviewers on Trip Advisor had listed the hotel as being slightly worn, but our room appeared to have been freshly painted and nicely updated. The room also included access to wireless internet, which was much handier than having to go down to the hotel lobby to use the internet, as had been the case with all of the other places we had stayed at.

Before heading into the city and beginning our sightseeing for the day, we asked the hotel where the nearest shopping center was. After receiving directions, we headed over towards the store to buy some food. After a long 15-20 minute walk, we eventually reached the large grocery store, which was actually located within a mall; quite a strange set-up, but the grocery store was HUGE, so we were very excited! We purchased juice, bread, meat, pastries, and chips; enough snacks to get us by for a few days. We had a quick lunch within the mall, and then brought the other food back to our hotel room.

Our initial impressions of Cordoba were not so great and definitely not what I had expected. However, our negative reactions were probably unfair due to our recent visit to Sevilla. I'll be the first to admit that comparing the two cities to one another is completely unfair. While Cordoba is obviously not the large city that Sevilla is, it seemed to lack the special quality and ambiance that we had found in other places in Spain, such as Ronda or Barcelona. Even Granada, which I didn’t completely love, seemed to have much more character and more architectural interest than Cordoba did. I'll bet that some might consider Cordoba as a diamond in the rough, as many of the buildings were in dire need of help.

Our first visit was to the Mezquita (Great Mosque of Cordoba) which is a Roman Catholic Cathedral that was built in the 16th century within the walls of a former mosque that was originally built as a church (confusing, eh?!). It once held the impressive title of being the second-largest mosque in the world. It wasn't until after the Spanish Reconquista that the Mosque was returned to its original use as a church.

The interior of the Mezquita was absolutely amazing with hundreds of columns and arches that just begged to be photographed. I personally thought that the cathedral that was placed within the center of the mosque seemed strangely out of place. However, it was interesting to see how they had integrated the two forms of architecture together. We also enjoyed walking through the welcoming courtyard (Patio de los Naranjos) that was filled with orange trees and was actually free for all to wander. The air here smelled lovely just as Sevilla had due to all of the blossoms on the orange trees.

After visiting the Mezquita, we took a short walk to the Alcazar de los Reyes Cristianos. This is a castle-like fortress that once belonged to the Christian Monarchs. While the interior of the Alcazar was not at all impressive, we totally fell in love with the gardens. I realized during our visit that we had visited three great garden sights in Andalusia (Granada, Sevilla, and Cordoba), all of which I absolutely adored. While the garden at the Alcazar in Cordoba were not as polished as the one we had visited two days prior in Sevilla, it was still lovely nonetheless, and I really enjoyed walking through the property, enjoying the sounds of water splashing from the fountains, and the smell of flowers that wafted through the air.

From the Alcazar, we headed into the Jewish Quarter, where it was recommended by our guidebooks to stroll the neighborhood, enjoying the architecture and ambiance. I’m honestly not quite sure what these guidebooks were referring to as we couldn’t seem to find anything extraordinary after walking through many streets. Maybe we weren’t in quite the right area, or maybe it was a lack of interest we had in the city, but whatever it was or wasn’t, we couldn’t seem to find it; we eventually left the neighborhood and headed back to the hotel.

While we had plenty of time available to enjoy other sights in the city, we honestly had no desire to do so. There comes a point in every traveler’s trip when one begins to feel the “travel overload” syndrome creeping into your day. You tend to notice this when things that would normally blow you away (such as the interior of the Mezquita) only seem to somewhat impress you. Or, when you find yourself wandering through some back alleyway, feeling board out of your mind, not sure of what exactly it is you are supposed to be enjoying or even looking at. Lastly, it can also be the point in your trip when you start to closely analyze whether or not an entrance fee to a sight you had planned on visiting is “truly” worth the cost and is justifiable; after all, churches start to blur together after just the first few, and museums all seem to display the same artwork, don’t they? This is where we were at on day eleven of our trip; we had seen lots of cities and too many attractions and we didn’t care to see anything else except our hotel room.

We just relaxed the rest of the evening, surfed the internet, and didn’t even go out for dinner (the horror!). Luckily, we had plenty of snacks available from our grocery store excursion earlier that day, so we had lots of things to eat. We were hoping that our next day, which involved lots of driving and an eventual stop in Toledo, would prove to be a better day.

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