We were advised at the train station to take a taxi, but we were having none of it. Surely if our hotel was near the Mezquita, there must be a bus. We found one, along with a crazy old Córdoban man who told Rui he needed a haircut, told me I was too pale and tried to sell us pot, along with a girl dressed from head to toe in yellow who told us which bus to catch. Once again we were amazed at the number of people wearing jeans in the 35 degree heat.
The Mezquita is on the left, our hotel is on the right.
On the bus ride we saw Roman ruins and when we arrived at our hotel we found what we’d hoped for- a view of the famed Mezquita (Mosque) from our window, which took our breath away. After unpacking and doing all those things you just have to do in a hotel room (jumping on the bed, checking out the TV channels, turning lights on and off) we decided it was time to eat.
Walking through Córdoba, there’s one thing we really like about it as opposed to Seville. You get the feeling people actually live there, even if they’re all on holidays. I can’t claim to be an expert, as in both Seville and Córdoba we stayed in the ‘tourist area’, the quaint-whitewashed-houses-and-narrow-cobbled-streets district, but whereas in that part of Seville it felt like people just owned their houses, in Córdoba it felt like they lived in them. It was a bit scruffier, a bit less gentrified, a bit more real.
We found a no-nonsense place (generally if you find one of these with some Spanish people in it, especially old men, you can’t go wrong. They won’t stand for crap food or expensive beer). I never thought I’d like Gazpacho, but I ate a lot of it in Córdoba and I loved it. From then on I was buying it from the supermarket all over Spain and Portugal. The recipe varies, but the Andalucian version is a cold soup of tomatoes, olive oil, onions, and bread, often with garlic, capsicum, cucumber, white vinegar and sometimes almonds. It’s fucking beautiful and I couldn’t get enough of it.
We were pretty buggered after that so after a wander around we decided to crash out, ready for the Mezquita the next day…
