Day 60: Córdoba

At 1 AM, I got on the bus to Córdoba. Intending to sleep, I reclined my chair, made a makeshift pillow out of my jacket, and closed my eyes. But as the bus pulled away and everyone turned off their overhead lights, I noticed that one solitary light was on: the one directly in front of me, for a lady was reading a book. Of all the seats in the entire bus, I had to get the one right behind someone who wanted to read. I tried to get past it though, and put my jacket over my eyes, but then an animal-like squeal pierced the air: a baby was playing with some guy (a peekaboo-type game) and every ten seconds, the kid would issue a demonic sound like the mating call of a dying pig/bird hybrid. The light combined with the ungodly banshee of a baby kept me from getting really any sleep at all on the four-hour ride, and I arrived at around 5:30 AM in Córdoba in an annoyed and exhausted daze.

One step in the cold night air shook the daze right off of me, though. I walked around for several minutes trying to get my bearings, and at last found one of the main thoroughfares of the town. I proceeded down it towards the heart of the city, still not sure what I would do to occupy my time before my hostel check-in opened at noon. I weaved in and out of side streets looking for shortcuts to the heart of the city but kept ending up back on the same main road; whether it was the dark or the sleepiness, something had crippled my sense of direction. Regardless I finally made my way to a major landmark: the river. Having in mind a vague plan to take a picture of the city at dawn, I proceeded towards the Roman bridge that I knew stood nearby. I passed an eerie I-didn't-know-what:
Some sort of church perhaps? The blue light was eerie but it made for a very interesting photo.

So I kept walking, finally finding the Roman bridge, which I proceeded to stare at in awe and wonder at the fact that it had spanned this river for roughly two millennia:

I took a photo of the heart of the city once just before dawn:



The eastern sky was thoroughly red and yellow at this time, and I assumed that any minute the sun would creep up and illuminate everything in a wonderful orange. So I waited...

And continued waiting...

And after about 30 minutes of standing around in the twilight chill, I finally saw the sign: "Sunrise cancelled Nov 11." Actually, no, the sun finally came up, allowing me to take the pictures I was waiting for:

This one looking across the Roman bridge:

I headed across into the heart of the city:
And walked alongside what I now recognized as the Great Mosque, which is absolutely enormous: it takes more than a minute at an adult's pace to walk from one side to the other, and if you think about how far you can actually walk in over a minute, and realize that this building was built about a thousand years ago, you'll realize the impressiveness of it:
Normally there's a E8 entrance fee, but for some reason when I went in I didn't get charged anything. The mosque was built and expanded from the 700s into the 900s, and when the Catholic monarchs reconquered it in the 1200s they wanted to demolish it. The townspeople were horrified at the idea and considering that Córdoba was the largest city in Europe (and arguably the largest city in the world) at the time, the kings didn't exactly want to anger its entire population. Instead, they settled for putting a cathedral in the middle of the mosque. The resulting blend of architectural and religious themes is strange but powerful to behold:







After leaving the Mosque I headed over to a breakfast place I had read about in a guidebook (courtesy of Andrew Nguyen). It looked very close on my map, but after walking several minutes I realized that the same street will change names every 30 feet or so when it takes a slight turn or something like that. As a result, this is the time when I figured out that navigation in Córdoba was going to be extremely difficult. I ultimately found the place and ordered what they were serving: (I forget if I've already explained this but) "pan con tomate" or "bread with tomato", a typical Spanish breakfast dish. It's a toasted baguette-ish piece of bread, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt, then covered with a garlicky tomato sauce (fresh - more like salsa than marinara). With that and a cup of cafe con leche I was set, and it cost a low, low E1.60, or about $2. You can't beat that with a stick.

Also about this time I realized something terrible. When packing the night before, I had waffled back and forth about whether to bring my computer and ultimately decided that lugging around another 5 pounds for hours was not in my best physical interest, so I left it and took out all my related electronics from my backpack. Luckily, I remembered to bring my camera battery charger; unluckily, I forgot my European-US electrical outlet converter, without which I would be unable to charge my camera batteries. I headed to the only place I could think of to find a replacement - El Corte Ingles, which is, after all, as omnipresent as Wal Mart is in the US. Halfway there, though, I ran into this:


It's a Roman temple built in the first century during the reign of the emperor Claudius.

Finally I found some converters and bought one out of sheer necessity, stowing it in my backpack for when I finally arrived at my hostel.

Heading back toward the city center I passed by a remarkably well-preserved Roman mausoleum:

Passed by the ruins of a Roman amphitheater:

On which were happily playing some snails.

I saw the old city wall:

And finally made it to a familiar site, Alcázar de los Reyes:


"Familiar" why? Well, the last time I saw that tower it was lit up with a blue light if you recall.








After the Alcázar, I finally headed to my hostel, got my room, and unloaded my stuff, but I encountered a problem. On attempting to plug my camera battery charger into the converter, I discovered that the converter had a little rim on it which allowed me to plug in normal power cords, but for something like a charger that has to be flush against the plug, it wouldn't fit. What ensued was a roughly hour-long struggle to cut the plastic rim off of the charger with a butter knife I borrowed from the hostel dining room, which ended up cutting me once and simply wearing out my hands from all the grabbing and wrenching and cutting to the point that I almost had blisters. Ultimately I gave up and went to the front desk, asked for help, and the guy went to get a saw and pliers and finally cut it off for me. The rim thing, not my hand.

After that I headed to another place I had heard about from Andrew Nguyen's guidebook, a little Arabic tearoom called Sala de Té (Tearoom). I entered, asked for a specialty of the house and a little plate of pastry-treats, and was presented a few minutes later with a tiny teapot full of a mint-eque tea, alongside a plate that was an assortment of little flaky Arabic pastries, dried apricots and plums, and tiny cookies, all for about E3 or $4. I ate this and headed back to the hostel for a moment to decide what to do next, and (this happened to me far too often) I thought that it was about 7:00PM, but was told that it was only about 4:00. Maybe the lack of sleep threw me off, I'm not quite sure. I was also getting to the point where, thought I really liked that I had the day to myself, I would now like some friends to go eat or go to a bar with. Regardless, I decided to head out and explore a little more.

Heading back over near the Roman bridge, I took a few more pictures, and - wait...wait a minute. It can't be.

I headed down the little rampart down to the bridge. "There's no way it is" insisted one part of my brain; "you only saw from the back, it could have been anyone." But just as I was fully doubting myself, BAM, I was face-to-face with Kevin, the intern from commercial services. We halfway circled each other in disbelief, exchanging a flurry of "no way what are you doing here!"s before deciding to split up for a while and then meet up for dinner and all that good stuff. He wanted to see the Mosque which I had already seen so I decided to hit up the Archeological Museum:



And after that we went to a couple of tapas places and had some good food, drinks and conversation, and I retired to my hostel room to die. I later looked up my path for the day on google maps and estimate that I walked more than 12 miles. And that's on essentially no sleep and carrying a ~15 pound backpack for half of it.

Well, time to do the same thing the next day in Granada!