3 Días en Córdoba: Saturday

So Saturday morning, we all miraculously were up and out of the hostel by 9:00 AM. Amazing. And well worth it, because even though I would've paid to go into the Mezquita, going early meant we also avoided the clusters of tourist groups that like to invade these places. And the mosque is amazing–there's nothing quite like realizing you're in a place you've seen photos of for years. It was a little strange because even though it is also a mosque, the Catholic influence was strong enough that it really felt like a church in a lot more ways. The central part of the mosque, in the middle of all those columns and arches, is designed to be a Catholice cathedral, where they were actually holding mass while we were visiting. Photos not permitted while in session. Luckily, I took mine before mass, when they were just playing the organ–a great addition to the ambiance while visiting.

Arabic arches

Catholic time

Combined religions

The bell tower–and the palm trees

So, roughly 50 photos later, we'd done a lap of the huge expanse that is the mezquita, and ventured into the courtyard. My favorite part of the courtyard was the irrigation system they'd put in place so the fountain would water the trees eventually. Today, they also use a hose to get the job done (something I referred to as the "modern marble of plumbing" in my early-morning, not-yet-eaten-breakfast state), but I loved the design of it.

Courtyard walls

When we were done taking photos, we decided it was breakfast time–the idea that we could survive the whole morning on apples was not our best one. Plus, we had to make an attack plan for the day, so we went to a cafe called Oh La Lá, where I had the best tostada con tomate y jamón, café con leche, and zumo de naranja. Also known as toast with tomato and ham, coffee with milk, and orange juice. Or also known as my absolute favorite Spanish breakfast food.

 

Our attack plan first took us to the Puente Romano–another thing every Spanish city seems to have. There is almost always a Cathedral, and if there's a river, there will be a Roman bridge. 

While at the bridge, we met a man who does impressionist paintings on little slides of glass with his fingers. And they're amazing, so we bought some, and picked out the ones that depicted the white walls of Córdoba with the flower pots that are on every single window.

Next, we were considering going to the hostel for a short rest before lunch… but then we ran into the Alcázar de los Reyes. I don't even know how to describe this place, except that we took about 150 photos of the towers and the gardens–see below.

This is Kristi trying to drink the water even though they put a sign up that it's not drinkable...

Mila & I

After the Alcázar, we went to lunch at a place called 5 Arcos–in honor of the million Arabic arches all over town. This food was not exactly a winner, but it was good enough for a pre-siesta snack.

Also pre-siesta, we wandered around town and found Calleja de los Flores (it has more flowers than your average street) and the itty bitty little skinny street that requires you to go single file through it.

After siesta, we went to a Moroccan place we'd seen the first day, which advertised belly dancing at 8:00 on Saturdays. We thought we'd have dinner there, but unfortunately they were only serving drinks and pastries. So we all drank tea or juice and ate a baklava and watched the belly dancer, and then promptly decided we wished we could do something like that. The girl has some real skills.

Then, it was really dinner time. We found a fantastic tapas place, Taberna de la Tapa, where the waiter was super nice, there was a fútbol game on, and the tapas were pretty much your typical Spanish fare. Also a great dinner find. The waiter even recognized us the next day when we were walking around town! Oh, and I tried blood pudding, Mom & Dad! (Ten years after I was supposed to in London… better late than never?) It wasn't quite as terrible as I'd imagined when I was 9, but still not my favorite. What was my favorite was queso ovejo, the cheese tapa we ordered, which was also on the tostada with tomato and jamón that we ate. Simply delicious.

Om nom nom, tapas.

We wandered around town for a while after dinner, took some silly photos, and ran into a totally random parade/procession of some kind that involved a marching band and a lot of religious-looking things that we don't understand. It was either a funeral or some kind of religious ritual, we just have no idea which. And may never actually find out.

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.

Weekend Jaunt

Took a very foggy bus ride to Madrid this morning where myself and two friends caught a train to Córdoba. Pictures & details to come after the weekend, have a good one everybody!!

Yesterday

I'm going to say yesterday was an awesome day. In the morning, I went to the train station and got my train tickets for my upcoming weekend jaunt to Córdoba, and for 30€ less than it would be if I bought online. Get ready for all kinds of photos of old buildings next Monday!

My musicology class is getting much easier, and the professor even asked me a question I might've been able to answer... If I'd only seen the movie Psycho. We were using movie plots to describe song "plots."At least I said a full sentence in the class for once. 

At lunch, Megan, David and I had a conversation about horror movies, stemming from my earlier predicament concerning Psycho. We all hate horror movies, is really the moral of that story. And David was surprised by how few movies we'd seen... I don't think he realized we were in middle school when half the movies we were talking about were released. 

I was supposed to have my culture class at 6, but it was cancelled for some reason. For this, Camila, Samantha and I went to Mandala for coffee and snacks. I had a café bonbón (coffee and condensed milk), and a tostada with tomato sauce and olive oil. Absolutely delicious. 

After sitting in the cafe for two hours and talking about everything from travel visas to haircuts, I went to French class. And, like most of my classes this week, understood a pretty good portion of it. The Spanish thing finally seems to be clicking a little bit. I also went to a tea shop today where I had a whole conversation with the shopkeeper an we understood each other almost perfectly. Best. Feeling. Ever. 

School Week Roundup

• On Tuesday, one of my professors had lost his voice. Nothing like a professor, who you don't completely understand to start with, not being able to talk. He ended class early though, so there wasn't too much material to struggle through.
• David and I had a conversation about names on Tuesday night, because he thought my name was spelled all kinds of weird (Cornine... what is this nonsense). So then I told him that my brother's name was Cordis, and had a really tough time trying to explain where the name came from and still make it sound cool in Spanish (minimal success). And then he asked what's up with our names and if our parents don't love us or something. Because, while I love my name a lot, Cordis and I really do have horrible Spanish names. Like, if we grew up in Spain, we'd be those awkward kids teachers felt sorry for because of their unfortunate names. Sorry Mom and Dad...
• One of the girls in my Music in Spain class offered to loan me her notes at some point since our professor goes so fast that even the Spanish kids get lost sometimes. Given that I usually look at this girl's notes to try to catch up and figure out what's happening when I get lost anyway, I was pretty happy with this offer.
• Thursday afternoon, ISA offered a tour of the original university building, the one that was built after the city started growing and the Old Cathedral couldn't contain the size of the university anymore.

This is the famous façade the University is known for. Unfortunately, this is a terrible photo because they currently have equipment set up so you could go see the facade up close and personal, and while that's fun and all, it makes my photos turn out really badly. I'll take another photo when they finally take this down. In any case, it's super intricate and one of the things that tourists always want to see at USal.

So here's a super old classroom...

And one of the many really awesome ceilings in the building

This is the diploma of the very first female student in the world, who attended the University of Salamanca. Also, the first female professor in the world was at USal. And it was one of the first universities to be technically separate from the Catholic Church.

Theology classroom

University Chapel

Multiple fun facts about this chapel. First, only students are allowed to get married here. There's a 3 year waiting list, but you could do it if you wanted to. And because I'm at USal, even for just a few months, I could technically get on that list. Also, I mentioned before that Franco had his headquarters here in Salamanca back in the day. His house is just outside the back wall of this church. And because Franco wasn't exactly the most popular kid on the block, he had places set up all over the city in case he had to go into hiding for political reasons. One of those places is behind the painting in the very middle of the altar. Apparently, the painting is actually just a screen that you could roll up, and there's a whole room back there–sneaky.

Pigs & Aqueducts (AKA Segovia)

So our adventure to Segovia began at the lovely hour of 8 AM, a time when the streets of Salamanca are basically completely empty.

Luckily, it was at least light outside when we got to the bus pickup point. The bus ride to Segovia was two hours long, just enough to get a little nap in before our long, long day of walking started. The first thing we did when we got there was go to a potter's studio, because this is apparently a pretty big thing in Segovia. 

So he showed us how he does pottery on the wheel, and made a piggy bank as an example. Pigs in Segovia are kind of like frogs in Salamanca–they're in every single tourist shop, in a thousand different forms. In Segovia, they're known for cochinillo, roast pig. Unfortunately, due to being cheap and having a free sammich from María, I didn't get a chance to try it on this trip. Anyway, after a few of us in our tour group attempted to make some pots with limited success (except for that one kid who was in AP art in high school and already knew what he was doing…) we left the studio for the Alcázar, a palace on the end of town.

Large, made of stone, lots of towers… you get the gist. It's a pretty place, but it's one of the less important palaces in the big scheme of Spain, as far as I can tell. However, it is where Queen Isabella was staying when she got the news that her brother had died, and was then crowned the queen of Spain at a church across town, at the age of 23.

Here's a blurry photo of the mural in the Alcázar of Isabella (in the white) being crowned. It's a creepy mural though, because, for reasons I do not understand well enough to explain (the phrase "Blind Man's Day" was used), no one in the photo has eyes. If anyone's ever watched the show Supernatural, the people in the mural all look like the demons from that show. It's freaky.

No eyes, super creepy. Especially on kids.

We got to climb the towers of the castle as well, which was 152 tall steps, which actually made me slightly sore today. 

But the views from the top were fantastic.

That's basically the entire city of Segovia, and the mountains beyond it. Ta-da! Worth the climb.

Britt, myself, and Camila at the top of the towers, with the city's main cathedral in the background.

The other main attraction in Segovia is the Roman aqueduct that's been standing in the city for over 2000 years. And it's literally just made of rocks. There's no cement or anything else in between, and the whole thing is at a perfect decline of 1% or something like that. Basically, the Romans knew their physics.

A few more highlights of the city were the Casa de los Picos, which is now an art school, and the city is well known for…

…the epic amounts of piggy banks in the stores, which I really wanted to buy, but unfortunately my suitcase is going to be stuffed enough as is…

…and ponche segoviano, the city's other famous food product. I'm not completely sure what was in this, but I'd guess there's about a pound and a half of sugar in it, it was very sweet. We shared this little square between three girls and didn't feel like we missed out on anything at all.

And that, my friends, was my day in Segovia! I'm enjoying a very lazy Sunday today, so I will probably not have more fun content until later this week.