Cordoba Express

First off I need to amend my last post, besides fixing the stupid autocorrect errors that come from typing on an iPad. Our first two days in Seville were not a complete disaster because we had one of the best nights of the trip on our third night. That evening we went to see some flamenco dancing in this back room of a little bar. It was incredible! The singer, Spanish guitar player and dancers were all amazing and there were multiple moments in the performance where my jaw literally dropped. Though I quickly shut my mouth anytime one of the dancers did a quick spin as they flicked sweat onto all of us watching! Pretty gross but understandable as it was super hot in that room and that was some very physical dancing. Sorry, the photos aren't great. We weren't allowed to use a flash and put off the dancers.

For our last day in Spain, Ray and I decided to take a day trip outside of Seville, so we took the train to Cordoba. Cordoba is home to a mosque from the period when that area of Spain was under moorish rule. But since the Catholics had reclaimed the city, the centre of the mosque had been ripped out to make way for a catholic cathedral. The end result being a new (in comparison) catholic cathedral surrounded by an Islamic mosque. It makes for a beautiful juxtaposition between the two architectural styles and is a stunning building to visit. It was another scorching day in Spain so we spent most of the day searching for shady streets to walk down and trying to find shortcuts to limit the walking time. Unfortunately, we completely failed in that endeavor right off the bat. We were trying to get to the botanic gardens and after only finding an entrance to a small museum we followed the windy little ancient street around the edge of the garden- no door? So we looked at the map and decided we maybe had to enter from the gate in the city wall. So we left the old town walls and started walking around the outside to the point on the map where the gate was. As we start walking the path slopes further and further down, and when we notice the bridge over our heads to the main gate we realise we are in a moat. Great. With no stairs to be seen we decide to keep walking, eventually we must be able to get out, right? As we round a corner, I am starting to think we should turn back. But then we see benches and people sitting on them. When we make our way around we find some stairs right at the end and some gates that lead out to the road which are heavily padlocked. We had to walk even further to find our way out of this area to the road, finally we found the garden wall again but still no entry. We follow the wall back around to where we had started from. It was then we realised you were only able to enter the garden by paying for admission to the museum. Ray didn't have her student card and didn't want to pay the full price for the gardens so I quickly ducked in to take some photos. The gardens were really pretty and miraculously it seemed even the weather was cooler in there, probably thanks to all of the fountains. From the gardens we proceeded to wander around the streets of the old town. We went to the Spanish inquisition museum with high hopes that it would be better than the one in Seville. This time the museum was dedicated to the instruments of torture used in the inquisitions as well as other particularly gruesome devices that were used in other periods around the rest of Europe.

 

We returned to Seville a little while later, very tired from the heat and travel. Unfortunately it was our last night in Spain so we went out for one last meal of authentic tapas then turned in to prepare for the slightly daunting trip to Morocco the next day.

Xx