What a lovely city Córdoba is! Armed with a city map and some key places highlighted that we should see, Andrew and I embarked on walking to the Old Town to see the main highlight of the city – the Mezquita-Cathedral. It was interesting to read that while originally a Roman settlement, in the 8th century, when the Muslims occupied the area, Córdoba was a the place to come for education and learning in the world. By the 10th century Córdoba had grown to be the second-largest city in Europe. In 1984, the Mezquita-Cathedral was named an UNESCO World Heritage Site. The UNESCO status has since been expanded to encompass the whole historic centre of Córdoba, so now it has more World Heritage Sites than anywhere in the world, with four. Lastly, considering summer is in 2 days, apparently, Córdoba has the highest summer temperatures in Spain and Europe, with average high temperatures around 37 °C (99 °F) in July and August – well from our experience from Tudela to Zamora to Huelva to Sevilla – they all have Córdoba beat this year for spring temperatures above 40°C in June!
So to get to the Old Town, Córdoba has a LOVELY strip of gardens that you can walk down in the middle of the city! Sort of think of them as a very long oblong of a traffic circle (with some places to cross) where cars can go around in one direction only. In fact the road the hotel is on is on another one of these huge oblongs however going in the opposite direction and it has a park in the middle too! In looking for the wall that appeared on the map, we entered into the residential district a bit early, however soon found out way when all of a sudden we rounded the corner and there was a street full of stores – open on a Sunday! The Cathedral was very close by so we went in and took a look – got some more “reduced to free” tickets for having a disability and accompanying person and went into the cathedral. WOW – what an experience that was! To see its beginnings from when it was a mosque to now and how large the building is and how striking it was – awesome! My pictures really do not do the space justice. After we came out of the cathedral – which a bit about that – this is not the first time this has happened – it would not be possible to get into this cathedral if you used a power chair – there were 3 high steps to get in and then there were ramps everywhere and you received free admission – it was almost like you got free admission as you made it that far. Then to leave, the same thing happened again – ramp to get up to the doorway and then boom! Steps down or for the exit a very dangerous small carved out ramp that was not straight. So now I have gotten over that – we proceeded down to the river where there is a historic bridge crossing the river to a tower on the other side. Also, beside the river is an old water wheel and an historic gate to the city. Then we walked past the Fortress of the Kings and back to the lovely garden walk to our hotel! Once back to the hotel and cooled down (it was only a balmy 35 °C) we decided it was time to eat! Neither of us wanted a big dinner tonight so we settled on pizza from Domino’s again! My phone said it was 134 metres away and would be ready in 10 minutes. So we got ready and started walking, and walking and about 1.5 km later got to Domino’s! No idea what my phone’s issue was but that was a nasty surprise! Nothing like working your dinner off BEFORE dinner! So we had yet another picnic in our room and called it a night – tomorrow we depart for Granada and see what trouble we can get up to in that city!
