Cordoba - and home again.

CORDOBA

After catching an early train from Seville, we arrived in Cordoba at 9.30am, the last city on our four-week itinerary before we head for home.

Cordoba is the hottest city in Europe in summer. In July 2022 they had 19 days of 40-degree weather. We can count ourselves lucky as it is only due to reach only 37 degrees by 5 pm tonight!. It is an oppressive heat and even when overcast for a few hours there is no relief however we are coping quite well. We have noticed many houses and buildings are in the Moorish style with an internal courtyard, as is the case with our building. This creates an internal area where shade can be found most times of the day.

With map in hand together with Ivor’s phone and Google maps we set off to familiarise ourselves with the main part of Cordoba as we have two guided tours booked at different meeting points.

In no particular order, some images from our wandering....

If your vine doesn't flower, try some thick wire and a few bottles.

Note the long heavy whip(?) hanging down - one assumes for crowd control! Not required for us tourists this particular day. 😁

We visited the Calahorra Tower Museum, in an ancient defensive fortress one end of the Roman bridge, The museum celebrates the period when the Jewish, Christian and Muslim cultures lived in peaceful coexistence and yes, another tower for us to climb; after which a tapas lunch with large cold Sangrias hit the spot.

Three of the leaders in the 12th-13th centuries who are connected with Cordoba.

Alfonso the Wise, was King of Castile, León and Galicia and employed Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars at his court

Moses Ben Maimon (Maimonides) - born on Cordoba - a Sephardic rabbi and philosopher - he was also a preeminent astronomer and physician, serving as the personal physician of Saladin (who defeated the Crusaders at the decisive Battle of Hattin in 1187, capturing Jerusalem).

Averroes - an Arab Muslim polymath and jurist from Al-Andalus who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, psychology, mathematics, neurology, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics.

Scale model of the Palace.

A window in the tower museum

Some tourists hanging about.

Our first walking tour at 8.00pm was of the Jewish quarter. We thought best to have dinner before the tour and we headed to the Mercado Victoria (a.k.a. Victoria Market 😁) - an indoor local food market where you walk around and select from all the food on offer (tapas, paella and lots more) and choose a drink from the many bars. All very casual. The bill for our dinner was $43.00 (a cocktail, a beer, two glasses of wine and a seafood salad for two). It was fun and a good place to relax before the one-hour walking tour at 8.00pm in 35-degree heat. A fan purchased in Seville has become Glyn’s favourite accessory.

For those who drink them, a good price.

The Jewish Quarter tour provided insights into the Sephardic traditions and skills, particularly filigree work with gold and silver and production of gold and silver thread which was spun with silk to make it pliable. Our guide Ricardo (French, and a rugby fan 👍) pointed out places he suggested we return to the following day, which we did.

The next day was the tour of the Mezquita Mosque-Cathedral that we’d been looking forward to. On entering, the courtyard was impressive with ponds, fountains and orange trees.

However, the courtyard and exterior did not prepare us for the “wow” moment as we entered the prayer hall of the original Great Mosque – magnificent double arches made from red and cream bricks defined the naves (originally 11, but added to greatly over the centuries) supported by different types of marble columns which were mainly recycled from earlier Roman constructions. Our guide was excellent and managed to share so much with us in the seventy-five minutes allowed in the cathedral. The original Muslim chapel was completed in the year 786 to accommodate 4,000 people, the 47-metre tower was built in 952 and by 966 the mosque has been extended twice to accommodate 40,000 Muslims for prayer time. The population in Cordoba had grown to 500,000 at that stage (by comparison, London then had around 80,000 residents, and Paris around 50,000).

The original Great Mosque prayer hall.

When the Christians arrived in Cordoba, rather than demolish the mosque the Catholic Church built a cathedral in the middle of the mosque’s prayer hall. This was dedicated in 1246 as a place of worship and mass is still held in the cathedral, but weddings and funerals are not allowed to be performed in the central cathedral (unless it’s a Royal event). The building, an amazing mix of Moorish and (later) Renaissance architecture, is a monument to the shared history of the two religions - Islam and Christianity - that were inspirational in creating the Mezquita Mosque-Cathedral as a place of worship.

And this is the Cathedral element within the Mosque prayer hall.

We also did a quick climb of the tower adjacent to the Mosque-Cathedral for a look at the views.

A fire showing in the distance.

The temperature was rising, hitting 42C and we took shelter in our air-conditioned apartment for a few hours in the afternoon to try and catch up on our travels. A good decision as the temperature was still 40C at 7pm when we went to dinner. Being our last night, and given that we had yet to see a live flamenco performance, we booked tickets for just that. It was a fantastic evening, colourful and loud, with guitar and vocals backing the stamping feet and clicking castanets.

On our last morning we set off to find the famous flower patios in Cordoba. Every May since 1921 Cordoba holds a Patio Festival and competition when residents are invited to decorate their patios with flowers. It is pretty competitive and during the festival all the patios are open for public view. Outside of the competition week a few remain open for the public (with a donation, which was a pleasure to do).

The most successful patio garden contestant's record - posted on the wall outside the house.

Literally a 'watering can'

And using the watering can....

This (watering can) gardener's son makes jewellery and 'we' purchased a set of earrings.

A statue of the Patio Garden project.

We departed Cordoba in the afternoon by train for an overnight stay at a hotel near Madrid airport for our morning flight - the first of the three flights before arriving in Melbourne at 11.30pm Thursday night. We made sure to have our puffer jackets handy.

This sign was in our apartment in Cordoba, and after four weeks with carry-on luggage and clothes in need of refreshing this sign said it all.

Ivor has been a star arranging taxis, Ubers and finding our way through little lanes and cobbled streets (says Glynis) and Glyn did a tremendous job planning and booking the trip (says Ivor).

We have missed our family and friends, however we have made wonderful memories and have learned heaps over these past weeks, met and chatted to folk from all over the world, enjoyed interesting food and sampled good wine, had lots of laughs, caught seven flights, ridden ten train trips, sampled twelve different beds and puzzled over the same number of shower tap settings (none of them operated the same way), used a dozen hairdryers (Glyn says some more ordinary than good), and we are still very happily married and look forward to seeing everyone when we’re back again.

Although it can be time consuming when we are travelling, we find a record – blog terrible word) – is a good way we can keep a record of where we’ve been and what we’ve seen, and, should friends and family be interested, we are only too happy to share our time away.

Best Regards to ALL – and thanks for the kind feedback, we’ve enjoyed reading the comments!