We took a side trip with our friend Ruth to the city of Cordoba. Jim and I had been there in approx.2006. We loved it but were there only for a day. This time we stayed overnight. Cordoba is a city in the province of Andalusia. It was a roman settlement taken over by the visigoths and than the muslim (8th century) and finally conquered in 1236 by the kingdom of Castile. It is situated on the Guadalquivir river. (remember the song by Chris De Burg: spanish train?)
A merchant told me: ''We are three culture; Christians, muslim and Jewish''. And you feel it in the old Cordoba. Our hotel, the Marisa, was right across the street from the Mezquita.
We visited the Mezquita the next morning. It is free to do so between 8:30 and 9:30. On the site of the Meaquita was first a visigloth church than a Catholic Basilica of st-Vincent of Lérins. In 784 a great mosque was built on the site. Cordoba returned to the Christians in 1236 ad The beauty of the mosque was so great that it was decided to keep the building and just change the inside. It is called the mosque but its Catholic name is : Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption. Masses are still celebrated there.
The first morning, on arrival, we took a cab to the Alcazar ( the palace) built in 1328 it became the primary residence of Isabella I and Ferdinand II of Aragon. It is at that emplacement that the Queen and King gave their blessing to Christopher Columbus's trip to the East Indies.
The gardens are beautiful, right now it is the spring growth but later in season it becomes spectacular.
We found a great little restaurant for supper, El Capricho, the food was very good for a decent price, the owners could barely speak english, well actually could not other than understand what we chose for the meal lol. We had a great time. As we are finished our supper Jim ask for la quenta por favor and the owner said a big relax! we had a good laugh and she came back with a free homemade liquor for us to enjoy. after supper we went elsewhere for desert. Than we had another couple of hour before we could go to a Flamengo show. They did not want us there before 10 pm. So we went back to El Capricho to drink. The man owner said; you are family now, in Spanish of course! We had good laughs.
Flamenco, Jim and I LOVE flamenco. It is such a passionate dance. We loved the venue. We prefer small taverns or cultural centres to restaurants. So we reserved our seats in this place; Arte y Sabores de Cordoba. Well we get there get seated and wait. About 20 minutes after the show was supposed to start there is still only three people in the place, Ruth,Jim and I. We were killing ourselves laughing at that point, all the alcohol kicking in. They came in the room and said that eight people just cancelled, did we mind being the only ones for the show. My question was are you sure YOU want to put on a show just for 3. So we got a great show and we actually chatted with the show people before they started, two more people joined us. They put all their heart in the presentation just for us. I'll write about the end of our trip in a new blog tomorrow.