3 Días en Córdoba: Friday

So this was an absolutely fantastic weekend, Mila, Kristi and I lucked out big time in that we managed to pull of a nearly flawless weekend trip. And I have roughly 400 photos to prove it. Partially because my camera battery was the only one that lasted the entire trip, so I wasn't the only one using my camera for photos. And Kristi likes to take photos of more or less everything. Which is good for recording the trip, I must say. But when I told María how many photos I'd taken, I think she thought I was either kidding or didn't know what number I was saying in Spanish. She thought I meant to say 40. Nope.

In any case, the weekend began very, very early Friday morning with a bus ride to Madrid, then a train ride down to Córdoba. It was cloudy when we arrived, but at least it wasn't pouring rain like it was in Salamanca.

First order of business–find the hostel. Which was put on a major hold when we came across a park with palm trees in it. Couldn't pass up the dozens of photo opportunities that provided, right?

Anyway, we finally got to the hostel, which was incredibly nice, it was a really great find. We had our own very spacious room, with its own little bathroom and individual beds for all three of us. So after dropping our stuff and taking a quick siesta, we set out to explore the town. We ran across the horse stable right next to the Alcázar, and then explored the ciudad antigua–the central, older part of the city with the famous mosque and other ancient stuff. 

The lobby of our hostel

A real orange tree!

Horsies!

Typical street of Córdoba

Fountain in the plaza, with pink water in honor of breast cancer month.

For dinner, we went to this place called El Rincón de Carmen, which was slightly pricier than we originally planned, but so worth it. We decided to go family style and shared plates of marinated salmon with a tuna & pepper salad, pork with french fries, and fried eggplant with molasses. Plus we got desserts, and discovered, after the table next to us asked what our favorite was, that everyone liked someone else's dessert better than their own, so we we just rotated! Which did nothing to help our new friends decide what to order later, but made us happy. After dinner, we headed home even though it was only 10:00, because we wanted to get up bright and early for free admission to the Gran Mezquita, if we got there before 9:30 AM.