02/24/17 Córdoba

The First Day of Our Trip to Spain in 2017

We spent month, months, planning this trip. Everything was in place. Want to guess how long the plans lasted? Go ahead, guess. No sooner had we cleared security and sat down in a restaurant at the airport, than I got a message saying that one of our flights had been cancelled. With visions of missed flight connections, a missed train, a missed night in Córdoba and so on, I rushed to the Delta desk and was fortunate to find a very helpful representative. In half an hour he managed to route us from Atlanta to Paris to Madrid AND get us to Madrid 2 hours earlier than our original schedule.

We were able to change our train tickets and get to Córdoba two hours early which gave us enough time to have a late dinner. Our hotel here, the Patio del Posadero, is small and quite nice. Lisa and Jose, the owners, have done wonderful work in restoring a 15^th century building into a boutique hotel with only 4 rooms.  We are in the “Quelo” room. Quelo means dance in Calo, the gypsy language. The room is small, but comfortable. 

Breakfast was extraordinarily good and was accompanied by good conversations with Lisa and Jose.

It rained most of the way from Madrid to Córdoba last night and we awoke to what looked like a cold and overcast morning that seemed to promise more rain. The weather turned much nicer while we were out and about. It was nice enough that we were able to eat a leisurely lunch outdoors near the mezquita.

 We feel quite comfortable walking around in the old part of the city since we have visited before.

Today we walked from the hotel to the mezquita (which, technically, is a Catholic cathedral, but which we think of as the mosque) in a few minutes and had an enjoyable visit.  Some of the areas which had been under renovation the last time we were there are now open.  I never feel that the pictures I take in the mezquita convey the art and sheer size of the place.  Today I had 3 different cameras and took my time to set up shots and I STILL don’t think the pictures do it justice.

We had a special treat while we were there today: someone played one of the large organs in the choir.  There are in fact two large organs with great array of pipes.  I had wondered where the keyboards were and discovered that now the organs are played by what looks like the same kind of keyboard (ranks of keys, anyhow) that you would find in any church.  But the sound was really good.  People flocked to the choir to hear but the music did not last long.

After the mezquita, we walked around some parts of the old city we hadn’t seen before we headed back to the hotel. We had decided that it would make sense to take it easy on our first day.  Last night we ate at a near-by restaurant called La Tinaja. We liked it so much that we will go back tonight. They have a good selection of tapas at reasonable prices, so there are plenty of things to sample.

Tomorrow we are off to Jerez and will probably have to miss the great breakfast at Patio del Posadero.

There are some pictures on the Córdoba pictures page.