Cordoba

Outside the Mezquita at night

Most of my first day in Spain was spent at in the library while Chris was in class. Once he got out of class and we had some lunch, we headed to the train station to go to Cordoba, a city about an hour away from Sevilla. We didn't have train tickets yet, so Chris wanted to make sure we had time to get them before the train arrived, we made it with about an hour and a half to spare, needless to say, I don't think he had to worry. We arrived in Cordoba that night and checked into our hostel before heading out to explore a bit and find some dinner. Our hostel was great, the perfect location and pretty cheap! The city was super quiet at night, but it was beautiful. We wandered around the area near the huge Mezquita and found a little restuarant where I had my first experience with tapas. Chris ordered three different tapas and some tinto de verano, red wine mixed with a lemon soda, my new favorite drink. The whole meal was awesome and afterward we headed back to the hotel to get some sleep before our busy day of sight-seeing.

The next morning, we planned to head out bright and early, entrance to the Mezquita cathedral was free in the morning, so we wanted to be sure to take advantage of that! Of course that didn't quite happen, as we all know, I've never been much of a get up early type of person. Luckily, our hostel was only a block or two from the Mezquita, so we made it with about 2 minutes to spare and still made it in for free! The cathedral was amazing. Because the Mezquita was once a mosque, the architecture is much different than the cathedrals I'm used to seeing in France. The entire place was nothing like what I'm used to after seeing places like Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur, it may have been completely different but it was just as impressive.

The awesome ceiling!

From the mezquita we headed over to the Alcazar, the royal palace in Cordoba. We were able to go up into the Towers and that looked out over all of Cordoba and had the perfect view of the Mezquita. It was really pretty. There wasn't much in the rooms of the Alcazar, and it was much smaller than any palace I've been to in France. Just another example of how different French and Spanish architecture is. We wandered around the gardens in the Alcazar and found an older American couple to take our picture.

After the Alcazar it was lunch time! We found a little Spanish bar for more tapas. They were super cheap and authentic and delicious. Chris kept saying he wanted to try bull tail, but that was not going to be happening, so I made sure you veto any tapa that had the word toro in it's name. I've been getting much better about trying new foods while abroad, but a girl has to draw the line somewhere and that just sounds disgusting.

After lunch we wandered around Cordoba a bit more and stumbled upon the last tourist destination on our map, the synagogue. Of course we arrived 5 minutes after it closed for lunch (seriously, what is with the Europeans and randomly closing in the middle of the day) so we decided to go to a little sidewalk cafe. After hanging around for about an hour and a half, we headed back to the synagogue and walked into a square room with some carvings in the wall. After about 2 minutes of looking at the signs that translated them, I thought we would head onto the next room, but there were no other rooms. That was it, a tiny, square room, with a few measly carvings in the wall. After over an hour build-up it was quite the let down to say the least... I didn't even take any pictures, it was that anti-climatic.

We had some time until we had to be at the train station to head back to Sevilla. We hung out in a park for a while. Playing catch with an orange. I had made the mistake of saying I hadn't noticed any orange trees in Sevilla, and I thought it was cool that they were all over Cordoba. Chris laughed at me and told me that they are all over Sevilla and continued to point them out for the rest of the week once we got back. Trust me, after all of the times he pointed them out to me, I will admit that they are EVERYWHERE, and I really should look up more often...

We took an evening train back to Sevilla where we got to listen to a little Spanish boy scream most of the time. It was a little annoying, especially since his family continually laughed at him when he was completely disrupting the entire train instead of trying to calm him down. Needless to say I think everyone in the car was happy when the train arrived at the Sevilla train station...